Jayanta Mahapatra: A Poet of Social-Cultural Concerns.

Jayanta Mahaptra has made a significant contribution in enriching the Indian Poetry in English with an innovative use of Indian themes and contemporary idiom in his poetry. Originally hailing from Orissa and spending his whole life in and around a typically rich mythological background of Cuttack, he steps beyond the physical confines of regions in his treatment of people's pleasure and pain in his poetry which is deeply tinged with an unusual awareness of the surrounding social and cultural realities. This portrayal of human situation forms an integral part of his poetry thus taking into account almost all the prevailing grievances of humans in general- and of Indians in particular- such as poverty, corruption, crime, lack of communal harmony, social unrest, grass-roots level realities of common man along with his symbolic competence. The present paper attempts to throw light on Mahapatra as a poet of universal socio-cultural concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]