A.K. Ramanujan (1929-1993) was, arguably, modern India's finest English-language poet. At the time of his death he was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Chicago, and recognized as the world's most profound scholar of South Indian Language and culture. During his lifetime he published three volumes of verse in English--The Striders (1966), Relations (1971), and Second Sight (1986)--and had completed work on a fourth volume, The Black Hen, which is published here for the first time.
Ramanujan is best known for his pioneering translations of ancient Tamil poetry into modern English. These permanently altered the perceptions of the Indian literary map in the West. Before him, ancient Indian literature was thought to be mainly Sanskritic. After he published The Interior Landscape: Poems of Love and War, and other volumes between the sixties and the eighties, it became apparent to modern poets and scholars that there was a wealth of poetry in other Indic traditions. Reflecting his lifelong interests in folklore, anthropology, structuralism, and biculturalism, thsi volume of his collected poems represents the complex distillation of a lifetime of unusual thought and feeling. It will be welcomed by all lovers of contemporary poetry.