Rain Incarnations

A book of memorable poems about rain-in image, metaphor, symbols-that speak

truths about the natural world, and the world of the human heart and mind. Exquisite

poems, brilliantly translated into English from the original Odiya.

'Bishnu Mohapatra, in these viscerally beautiful poems, unearths the spiritual

in us that rain will nourish and destroy. Socrates and Ambedkar, anarchy and

accident, silence and mystery, love and safety, nothingness and infinity, fever

and death, all are made to fall within the metaphorical power of rain. Only

a poet can take an idea to these places and these depths.'-Akeel Bilgrami,

Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University, USA

'No Indian poet can afford to ignore the many shapes that rain takes, its

many messages and its irresistible metaphoric potential. Bishnu Mohapatra

encounters rain in different locations and captures its elemental force in its

diverse costumes and incarnations: as singer, dancer, mendicant, the inviting

woman, the common man....At times rain takes on even political hues. Each

piece in the book is a rediscovery....The poem here is a happening, like the

rain itself, unpredictable, polyphonic, and polysemic.'-K. Satchidanandan,

poet, critic and president of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi