Woman by Arun Kolatkar poem lines and summary

Woman

      - Arun Kolatkar

Poem lines:

A woman may collect cats read thrillers

her insomnia may seep through the great walls of history

a lizard may paralyse her

a sewing machine may bend her

moonlight may intercept the bangle

circling her wrist

a woman may name her cats

the circulating library

may lend her new thrillers

a spiked man may impale her

a woman may add

a new recipe to her scrapbook

judiciously distilling her whimper the city lights

may declare it null and void

in a prodigious weather

above a darkling woman

surgeons may shoot up and explode

in a weather fraught with forceps

a woman may damn

man

a woman may shave her legs regularly

a woman may take up landscape painting

a woman may poison

23 cockroaches.

Introduction of Arun Kolatkar:

          

          Arun Kolatkar is one of the greatest

Indian English poets of the Contemporary age. He is using both Marathi and English in his writings. He has tallently mirrored the Indian society humourously with Its merits and demerits. His poetry exerted profound influence on modern Indian poets. His first collection of poetry Jejuri won Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1997. His Marathi verse collection Bhijki Vahi 

won Sahitya Akademi in 2005. An anthology of his works Collected Poems in English was published in Britain by Bloodaxe Books in 2010. He is a trained as an artist from the J.J.school of Art , he was also a graphics designer.

Summary of the poem Arun Kolatkar's Woman:

         The poem woman was first published in 1960 and later it was in Kolatkar's Collected Poems in English. The poem lists out many things which a woman may or may not do.There are some thing, like collecting and naming cats, reading thillers, dreaming about history, being paralysed by a lizard, bending over a sewing machine and painting the landscape which reflects a woman's soft nature. The same gentle woman can damn a man. Though the situation is not given it can be guessed that a woman with, her will-power can spoil the life of a man if he is cruel to her. She can poison twenty three cockroaches for the sake of her family . There is an undertone of violence in 'impaling' and 'whimpering'.

         Perhaps it is purely sexual. In spite of her sufferings, woman fulfil all the domestic works. Thus the poem gives an

amount of woman's normal activities. All of them are done in side the house. Even the library comes to her house. Hence the portrayal of woman signifies her static and confined nature in a patriarchal society. A woman is restricted to do her works inside the house. The poem gives a warning to men-folk that men cannot torture women for ever. Because she is able to damn man. She tolerates her suffering without resistance. But she cannot be suppressed at all times.

         The poem is self- contradictory. The subdued soft woman can be violent also. At the outset woman seems to be voiceles. But in fact, she is able to give vent to her emotions. The poem ultimately stresses on the powerful nature of woman. The Poem has emphatically and wonderfully described the nature

of woman. It is also enigmatically

offering the Possibilitives of Pre-imagining.

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Woman by Arun Kolatkar summary