RE: Who's a Poet?
V. Chowdary Jampala (cjampala@quark.dayton.net)
Fri, 30 May 1997 14:07:04 -0400 (EDT)
On Fri, 30 May 1997, Bachoti Rao wrote:
> Ramakrishna garu said:
>
> IF "grammatical correctness also was ridiculed by some modern poets",
> then
> it is best to terminate any and all discussion. It is as if a cook is
> saying "why follow the 'rules' of a recipe, or 'good taste'? I'll put
> red
> chillies in jilEbee, and call it 'chilEbee'. If you can't stand the
> heat,
> get out of the restaurant".
>
> I like your 'chilEbee' example very much (only the example but not the
> dish).
Speaking for myself, I do not believe that we have reached the end
of culinary creativity and believe that there are a lot more new dishes
and recipes waiting to be discovered. Somebody has to experiment and
create these new dishes. My hats off to the cook who dares to make the
chilEbee. If the chilEbee tastes good, I will eat it; even if it doesn't
taste good the first time, I may learn to like it over time. Or I may
decide that it is not for me. To say that the ulimate dishes
have already been created and nobody can ever deviate from the established
recipes may lead to a sense of comfort with the familiar, but can be very
detrimental to progress. After all, chillies (without which one cannot
imagine Telugu cooking) came to us at a much later date (17th century?
we should ask palana) in our own culinary development.
> I think the question about the chando work that made impact in the
> recent past
> should not have been asked because it is just one aspect of
> literature.
In light of Sri Rao's earlier comments in this post about need for
sensitivity to different points of view, I am puzzled by his suggestion
that some (or at elast one) question should not have been asked. I suppose
that this openness to differences of opinion has some limits. May I
wonder what they are?
In any case, I asked that offending question a couple of times. I
don't want to make Sri Rao any angrier, but I am still not sure why that
question should not be asked. The issue being discussed at those times
was the current day viability of the art of chandO poetry. If all the
chandOlovers, chandOhaters, and I don't care about chandas but I am bored
to death about this telusaers cannot recall a major chandO work written in
a quarter century, it may be a statement about the current day viability
of the art of chandO-poetry. Besides, an answer to that question (which
had two parts - neither one publicly answered yet - what are the major
works and who are the current major exponents of the genre) would make it
easier for those interested in the issue to become familiar with those
authors and their works.
Regards. --- V. Chowdary Jampala