Connected with, and arising from the theme of alienation, is the motif of failure in Ezekiel’s poetry. “A refugee in spirit” in search of his “dim identity”, ruefully accepts his failure to identify himself with his Indian ethos and environment in an effort “to weave myself more closely into things”, “My backward place is where … Read more
Irony is the device used by Nissim Ezekiel most prominently in his poetry from Background, Casually, an early poem, which is an excellent example of this. He describes himself as a “poet, rascal clown”. As a student in a Roman Catholic school he was “A mugging Jew among the wolves. They told me I had … Read more
According to M.K. Naik, a major shaping factor in Ezekiel’s poetry is that he belonged to a Bene – Israel family which migrated to India generations ago. Thus “substantially alienated from the core of the Indian ethos”, Ezekiel was acutely aware of this alienation by the fact that he had spent most of his life … Read more
Introduction of Poem: This poem “Enterprise” appeared in Nissim Ezekiel’s fourth volume of poems which was first published in 1960 and, in its second edition, in 1965, under the heading “The Unfinished Man”. Here we have an allegorical poem, that is, a poem which, apart from its surface meaning, has a meaning below the surface. … Read more