Shrikant Verma has been considered a controver¬sial writer right from the beginning. He has carried out many experiments in his poetry. On the basis of his poetic diction evident in his latest poems, it can be said that Shrikant Verma has given a new idiom to Hindi poetry, which is not merely playing with words but giving a digni¬fied expression to the poetic temper in terms of language embedded with layers of meaning. Talking about the poems in Magadh, we are struck by his economy of words. He has used only evocative pronouns around mythical episodes. For those without the necessary background of poetry, it may appear a mere play of pro¬nouns. But if we can react to the inner content of these words, we discover that it is a poetic process which takes us deeper and deeper into our own mental world. Hindi poetry today is in a very strange situation. Every poet considers himself a self-born messiah. But hardly one finds an attempt, a conflict, an inner churning through which a poet after breaking the pre¬valent tradition may have brought out a new image of Man. However, in the case of Shrikant Verma, we find the image of the Man of today emerging through historical and Puranic content of the poems.
March-April 1985, volume 9, No 3/4