A Great Orissan Pilgrim : A Study of Niranjan Mohanty\'s Works

Contents: Preface. 1. Creating a space of one\'s own: poetry in English from Orissa. 2. Postcolonial consciousness in the poetry of Niranjan Mohanty. 3. Two Orissan poetic pilgrims: Bibhu Padhi and Niranjan Mohanty. 4. Jayanta Mahapatra and the poetics of Pain. 5. A postmodernist reading of Niranjan Mohanty\'s Prayers to Lord Jagannatha. 6. Niranjan Mohanty: a Poet of The \'Bhakti\' Cult. 7. Krishna : The Divine quest for human love. 8. An interview with Niranjan Mohanty. 9. Homage of Niranjan Mohanty (1953-2008). 10. Obituary. Index.

"Niranjan Mohanty\'s poems speak to us with frank generosity and the mystery of life come through the linguistic melange of his creative utterance. His willing leap into the pool of memories creates a sense of presence through the metaphors of absence. The haunting presence of the metaphor of death invests his poems with a sense of mystery, a sense that is unverifiable, and non-negotiable by reason or intellect. An absence continues to haunt the poet since childhood. The fleeting nature of Time always chants a sweeping sense of absence. His poems record and celebrate "blue whispers of hearts, immaculate", the innocence ingrained in our sense of mortality, in the immaculate sense of things passed by.

This volume of research articles is a tribute to the author\'s long standing intimacy with this great soul." (jacket)