Author(s): Meena Alexander

Poetry

Beginning with the Kama Sutra, the erotic handbook written more than two thousand years ago, this gathering of poems ranges as far as present-day India and the poets of the Indian diaspora: from the 12th-century female poet Mahadeviyakka to the early 20th-century Nobel Prize-winning Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore and such contemporary poets as Vikram Seth and Meena Alexander (editor of this volume). Emerging from many Indian cultures and eras, the poems collected here reflect a variety of erotic and spiritual passions, and celebrate the powerful role of desire - both male and female - in the intricate dance of existence. This glittering tapestry of lyric voices beautifully and sensually evokes the transfiguring force of love.