This is a disappointing anthology. It is not a histori¬cally comprehensive collection where all the important and not-so-important poets of past and present are included, making the work serve as a re¬ference book as well as a liter¬ary treasury. Here the editor attempts to trace the develop¬ment of Indo-Anglian poetry from its beginnings to the pre¬sent day by selecting a number of representative poets with their characteristic work. What he selects, dissatisfies, what he omits, frustrates. In a book of 159 pages, 10- pages are devoted to poetry. Of these, 67 pages are given to poets of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. That leaves only 34 pages for the contemporary poets of the post-Independence period. And it is this wrong sense of priority displayed by the edi¬tor which makes one wonder what ultimate purpose such an anthology is intended to serve.
Nov-Dec 1983, volume 8, No 3