Collected Poems

An established classic, A.K. Ramanujan's Collected Poems represents the complex Distillation of a lifetime of unusually rich sensitivity, intellectual rigour, and feeling. Best known for his pioneering translations of Ancient Tamil Poetry into English, Ramanujan made it apparent to modern poets and scholars that there was a Wealth of poetry yet to be discovered in several Indic traditions.

A.K. Ramanujan (1929 - 1993) was one of the finest Indian poets Writing in English, and probably the most scholarly. At the time of his Death he was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Chicago, and was universally acknowledged as the authority on South Indian Language and culture Photo : K.G. Somsekher
Designed : Mark Heiman

Searchef="../books/Relations" Title="Relations">Relationsrittika Ramanujan
Introduction/Vinay Dharwadker

Book I : THE STRIDERS (1966) :
1. The Striders
2. Snakes
3. The Opposable Thumb
4. Breaded Fish
5. On a Delhi Sundial
6. A Leaky Tap after a Sister's Wedding
7. Two Styles in Love
8. Still Life
9. This Pair
10. On the Very Possible Jaundice of an Unborn Daughter
11. Still Another for Mother Lines to a Granny
12. A Rather Foolish Sentiment
13. Looking for a Cousin on a Swing
14. I Could Have Rested
15. On Memory
16. Instead of a Farewell
17. Self-Portrait
18. The Rickshaw-Wallah
19. Which Reminds Me
20. Sometimes
21. Chess Under Trees
22. No Man Is an Island
23. Anxiety
24. KMnO4 in Grandfather's Shaving Glass
25. Christmas
26. Conventions of Despair
27. A Certain Democrat
28. Towards Simplicity
29. A River
30. A Hindu to His Body
31. Excerpts from a Father's Wisdom
32. Epitaph on a Street Dog
33. Images
34. Still Another View of Grace
35. An Image for Politics
36. Case History
37. One Reads
38. Lac into Seal
39. The Fall
40. A Poem on Particulars

Book II : Relations (1971) :
1. It does not Follow, but When in the Street
2. Man and Woman in Camera and Out
3. A Wobbly Top
4. Of Mothers, among other things
5. The Hindoo : he doesn't hurt a fly or a spider either
6. Time and Time Again
7. Love Poem for a Wife, 1
8. Routine Day Sonnet
9. Army Ants
10. One, Two, Maybe Three, Arguments against Suicide
11. One More After Reading Homer
12. Some Indian Uses of History on a Rainy Day
13. A Lapse of Memory
14. Eyes, Ears, Noses, and a Thing about Touch
15. The Hindoo : he reads his Gita and is calm at all events
16. Poona Train Window
17. Time to Stop
18. Love Poem for a Wife, 2
19. Entries for a Catalogue of Fears
20. The Hindoo : the only risk
21. Real Estate
22. Any Cow's Horn Can Do It
23. When It Happens,
24. Small-Scale Reflections on a Great House
25. Smalltown, South India
26. Some Relations
27. Take Care
28. The Last of the Princes
29. Old Indian Belief
30. History,
31. Compensations
32. Obituary
33. Prayers to Lord Murugan

Book III : SECOND SIGHT (1986) :
1. Elements of Composition
2. Ecology
3. No Amnesiac King
4. In the Zoo
5. Questions
6. Fear
7. Astronomer
8. Death and the Good Citizen
9. The Watchers
10. Snakes and Ladders
11. Pleasure
12. A Poor Man's Riches 1
13. On the Death of a Poem
14. A Poor Man's Riches 2
15. A Minor Sacrifice
16. Alien
17. Saturdays
18. Zoo Gardens Revisited
19. Son to Father to Son
20. Drafts
21. At Forty,
22. He too was a Light Sleeper Once
23. Highway Stripper
24. Middle Age
25. Extended Family
26. The Difference
27. Dancers in a Hospital
28. Moulting
29. Some People
30. Connect!
31. Looking and Finding
32. Love Poem for a Wife and Her Trees
33. Looking for the Centre
34. Chicago Zen
35. Waterfalls in a Bank
36. Second Sight

Book IV : THE BLACK HEN (1995) :
1. The Black Hen
2. Foundlings in the Yukon
3. Dream in an Old Language
4. Shadows
5. At Zero,
6. Salamanders
7. Traces
8. Fire
9. Birthdays
10. Fog
11. One More on a Deathless Theme
12. August
13. Three Dreams
14. It
15. Not Knowing
16. On Not Learning from Animals
17. Blind Spots
18. Love 1 : what she said
19. Sonnet
20. Mythologies 1
21. Love 2 : what he said, groping
22. Turning Around
23. Love 3 : what he said, remembering
24. Mythologies 2
25. Love 4: what he said, to his daughter
26. Mythologies 3
27. Love 5
28. Contraries
29. Engagement
30. The Day Went Dark
31. Love 6: winter
32. That Tree
33. Pain: trying to find a metaphor
34. Fizzle
35. A Devotee's Complaint
36. In March
37. A Meditation
38. Difficulty
39. Poetry and Our City
40. No Fifth Man
41. Bulls
42. Bosnia
43. A Report
44. As Eichmann Said, My Brother Said
45. The Guru
46. A Ruler
47. Poverty
48. Butcher's Tao
49. A Copper Vat
50. Museum
51. Images
52. If Eyes Can See
53. Elegy
54. Lines
55. To a Friend Far Away
56. Some Monarchs and a Wish
57. From Where?
58. Death in Search of a Comfortable Metaphor
59. Pain
60. Fear No Fall

A Note on the Black Hen and After/Molly Daniels-Ramanujan