Paper Details

Name: Gagneetpal Kaur
Country: India

Year: 2015
Volume: Volume-2, Issue-1 (January-June)
Page Number: 25-27

Nissim Ezekiel (1924-2004), a Bene-Israelite settled in India was educated in Mumbai and London. He took up teaching and retired as ‘Professor of English’ at the University of Bombay. A major-minor Indian English poet of the post-independence era, Ezekiel’s A Time to Change (1952) heralded the modern, realistic and critical poetry of intellectualism. His poetry is chiefly introspective and self-analytical and he expresses modern concerns in contemporary voice and manner. Death, loneliness, alienation, the Indian scene, love, sex, urban life and spiritual values are some of the themes of his poetry. His poems are remarkable and are appreciated for their irony and intellectualism and they are noted for the absence of images.
Some of the qualities which go to make Ezekiel a vitally meaningful poet include his mastery over a variety of styles, poetic modes, his exquisite craftsmanship resulting in the poise and precision of language, rich supply of rhythm capable of subtle modulation and wry irony which come in handy at crucial junctures. Ezekiel’s various achievements make him one of the most mature and ‘consistently meaningful poets’ in Indian writing in English.