From: sundar@indigo1.hsis.uci.edu (M. Sundaramoorthy)
Subject: Re: valai malar 'a' - some comments
Newsgroups: soc.culture.tamil
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 24 Dec 92 01:21:37 GMT

In article <1992Dec23.065453.27153@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> ssankara@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Sornam Sankara) writes:
>
>Already Gopals and Sundarapandian expressed their disappointment for not
>getting  enough feedback from the general public in this net.
>
>KUSHBOO's devaalayam (Cap letters to atract the audience here) did not surprise
>^^^^^^^
>me because this net is no different from the TN general mentality.  People
>might call me as 'cynical' person looking at everything with a distorted
>outlook.  But I am more and more becoming cynical (?) because a posting on
>Khusboo or 'poo songs'  or '10 movies' or just politics can evoke so many
>responses whereas the SCT magazine 'a' goes unnoticed.  We need not be experts
>to comment on the contents nor we need to be writers to contribute.  Can't we
>just go through atleast one article of it and comment a few lines.  Atleast
>write some flames on the articles ?
>
>No doubt we deserve Kushboo as our god or leader !
>
>"entRu madiyum intha cinema moham"
>----------------------------------

	I share these feelings. But the irony is we hear hue and cry 
	in the net about TN being plagued with the cinema culture,
	while doing the same here. We even pass judgement that TN will
	never change and forget that we are also part of that.
	When it comes to cinema addiction, there is no difference of
	educated and illiterates. 
>
>     Still I am not able to appreciate these poems of Abbas much except that
>they are different from the usual puthukkavidhaikaL.  Do I miss something here
>?   I am really not very clear about the criticisms on poems given by the
>critics.  As Sundaramoorthy said, it is very subjective.

	When it comes to broad classification of modern poetry, we can put 
	them in these two classes: (1). aesthetics (azhagiyal) and (2)
	politics (arasiyal). While the former is expression of personal 
	experiences,  the later becomes social criticism 

	Abbas's poetry falls in the first category. When one writes poems
	of this nature, there is a tendency to believe, he doesn't have
	social responsibility and so is not a good poet.

	And it is very difficult to write good political poetry. Whatever 
	written in Tamil in TN are more of satirical nature than good political
	poetry. Even, Inquilab who is acclaimed as writing political poetry 
	suffers from this. Most of the so called political poems do not
	appeal to me. We hardly see any good poems with political flavour 
	in TN. Whatever possibility was availble, were exploited by the cinema
	'poets' only to make the subject a laughing matter. I suggest 
	Tamilavan's book 'pudhukkavidhai: naalu katturaigaL' and an article
	'pudhukkavidhayum arasiyalum' by Charu Nivedita in 'pudhukkavidhaiyum
	pudhup pragnaiuym', which deal with this topic. I think it is better
	to read essays on politcal and social issues and social issues than
	than poetry, at least in Tamil.

	If one really wants to read good political poetry, I would suggest
	the Eelam poets like Cheran ('iraNdaavadhu sooriya udhayam', 'yaman'),
	Va.I.Sa. Jayapalan ('suriyanOdu pEsudhal', 'namakkenRu oru pulveLi'),
	Sivasegaram ('nadhikkarai moongil') etc. 
	
	If one is allergic to the word 'Eelam', they can look for some
	translations of Malayalam poet, Sachidanandan (he is the most
	widely translated Malayalam poet in Tamil), or Latin American
	poetry ('lathin americak kavidhagaL') or African poetry 
	('aRaikkuL vandha aaprikka vaanam'). 

>     Does 'eppOdhum' have a few transilteration mistakes ?   Since reading the
>poems (compared to prose or essay) in transliteration is very difficult it
>should be better to make them completely free of typos or errors.  It is better
>that it should be run and viewed in Tamil before publiishing it.  I am sure the
>editors may be doing this already.

	'eppOdhum' has at least two transilteration mistakes. We will keep
	this minimum in future issues.
>
>
>S. Sankarapandi

	M. Sundaramoorthy
	sundar@indigo1.hsis.uci.edu