Summary and critical Appreciation of the poem In Love by Kamala Das



Summary and Critical Appreciation   of   In Love  by Kamala Das
About The Poet: Kamala Surayya(born Kamala Das,1934-2009),also known as Madhavikutty, was an Indian English poet as well as a leading Malayalam author from Kerala, India. Her oeuvre written in English under the name of Kamala Das, is noted for the poems and explicit autobiography. She was marked as an iconoclast feminist writer  in her generation because of her  candid  and honest but stark treatment of  female sexuality devoid of  any sense of guilt .She  has been typecast as a confessional poet. She writes about sexual frustration and desire, of the suffocation of the arranged love-less marriage, of the futility of lust, of the shame and sorrow of not finding love after repeated and desperate attempts, of the loneliness and neurosis that stalks women especially. Her literary calibre is so much attributed to her love poems that she is also known as queen of erotica.
Source of the poem: The poem is taken from Summer in Calcutta.(1965)
About The Themes of the Poem: The prevalent themes of the poem are quest for love as well as identity, lust, self realization explicit expression  of female sexuality.
Images used by the poet: sexual interactions, heat, body or flesh, death.
Summary of the poem: The scorching heat of the day reminds the narrator (a woman) the passionate kiss of her lover. She can’t consider it as an act of love but expression of lust on their part. Like a carnivorous plant her lover tried to reach out for her to satisfy her unending lust. She meditates on the fact that there is no room or need for love where lust prevails. Even after realizing the crude reality, she ignored her ‘poor moody mind’ and negates her instinctive feelings, and aversion for lust . Driven by unbridled sexual desire, they continue to engage themselves in enjoyment of physical pleasure deliberately. Now in a solitary state, she watches the sleek crow in the morning. At night she hears the hoarse cry of the corpse bearer. In a moonless night she remains awake wandering along the corridors. Some questions are raised in her mind to perturb her. They lead her to reconsider and contemplate on the vital aspects of their relationship. Even her own body of flesh and blood divulges the truth of it, but she is reluctant to accept it(that their relationship is solely based on lust, not pure love). This particular poem reminds us Shakespearean sonnet no.129 where the utterly disgusted poet recoils after the shameful waste of spirit in sexual love. The same concept of disillusionment, a baffled quest for love and sad realization of reality can be observed in this poem.

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