Introduction
A River of A.K. Ramanujan which was first published in collection ‘The Striders’ in 1966 is a thought provoking poem. It is a poem which seems to be highlighting consequences of flood but it’s real focus is blind following of modern writers of old ones.
Central Idea
The main idea of the poem is to attack on new poets who do not write on their original subject and style. They still follow old writers hence omitted writing on an incident of flood in Vaigai river which caused death of a pregnant lady, two cows and swept away three village house.
Themes
- Old vs New writers – The main theme of the poem is source of inspiration of the new poets is still old writers and they are not writing anything new. They are still coping style and content of old writers for instance still writing on city and temples of Madurai and omitting dry and flooded condition of Vaigai river.
- Destruction by flooded river – Vaigai river gets flooded every year during rainy season and there is always some casualties in it. When poet visited it took life of a pregnant lady who might have identical twins and two cows probably named Gopi and Brinda. It also swept away three village houses.
Figure of speech
- Alliteration – ‘Couple of cows’ has alliteration as there is repetition of consonant sounds /k/ at the starting of the words.
- Simile – ‘the wet stones glistening like sleepy crocodiles’ has simile. Wet stones are looking like sleepy crocodiles hence this comparison is direct using ‘like’.
- Metaphor – There is a beautiful metaphor in the lines ‘the dry ones / shaven water-buffaloes lounging in the sun’. Dry stones are indirectly compared with shaven water buffaloes.
- Enjambment – Poem has abundance of enjambment. For instance “every summer /
a river dries to a trickle / in the sand”. A line of poem doesn’t have a completed sentence hence the sentence continues in further lines.
Poignant description using imagery
Poet has poignantly described scene of drowning pregnant lady. He imagines and writes that the lady might have twins and they would be “kicking at blank walls / even before birth” when their mother was drowning and they were dying too along with her. This kicking on blank walls shows hopelessness of those twins to save themselves.
Description of Indian Society
Poet beautifully describes Indian society. It has various instances where features of Indian society are described intelligently. Poet shows that water gates of bridge over the river are clogged with women hairs, cows are usually named Gopi and Brinda in India hence poet calls them with the same name. People have habit of showing rising river with counting cobbled steps used for bathing and some rituals. These things are quite Indian.
Rhyme and structure
Poem doesn’t have stanza formation. It neither have rhyme nor rhythm hence we can say that it is written in free verse.
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