CONDITION USED GOOD, FIRST PERSON , JAGANNATH PRASAD DAS , HARDCOVER, 1976

The striking quality of these poems is their emotional clarity, the honesty of experience, and a complete absence of cerebration or intellectualization. One enters a world—very much like the real one—where there is no hope and no escape.

The landscape reflects the inner world of modern man; it resembles a cubist painting: shattered planes, disjointed angles, and splintered fragments collaged together. When claustrophobia sets in, one feels trapped—in a cage, a closed room, or the confines of a motor car. There is a deep sense of helplessness, but no possibility of redemption. One must eternally burn in the house of wax. Concepts like victory and defeat, loss and gain, lose all meaning.

There is a unique, brooding quality to the poems—a dominant tone of quest and questioning. And, ultimately, through the sequence of poems, emerges a profound understanding—even if it is only the realization that the entire effort was futile.

When the original Oriya version, Pratham Purush, was published in 1971, it made literary history. The Hindi translation, released in 1973, received equal acclaim