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VOLUME 2 NUMBER 2 DECEMBER 2003 (4th
Issue)
An International Literary Journal
Edited by: Dr.
Santosh Kumar Binding: Paperback (pp: 384)
ISSN: 0972-6004
Availability: In Stock (Ships within 1 to 2 days)
Publisher: Cyberwit.net Pub. Date: Dec. 2003
Condition: New
Description:
The poems included
in Taj Mahal Review, (December 2003) explore a great variety
of topics. We find nothing doubtful or pessimistic in several
poets, who seem to dwell in the infinite realm of spirit. On
the other hand, some poets included in Taj Mahal Review
criticize the new dictatorship of materialism over the soul,
the cruel values of globalized world, full of people who have
become "nothing but naked, eternally restless
minds." Many poems in Taj Mahal Review have the subtle
appeal of music. The poets appear to be influenced by
Aristotle's maxim: "Think like a wise man, but express
like the common people." The short stories reveal deft
characterization and plot construction marked by psychological
intensity. TMR also contains Reflections, Book Reviews, and a
separate 23 page section providing biographical details of
each author. TMR is beautifully bound, a journal that will
compare favorably with several international publications,
since it has been designed and produced after a careful
copy-editing.
I
will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether I
call itself my home, my fatherland or my church, and I will
try to express myself in some mode of life or act as freely as
I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only
arms I allow myself to use- silence, exile and cunning.
--James
Joyce (1882-1941), A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man,
Ed. by Seamus Deane, Penguin, p. 268-269.
From
The Editor
Welcome
to Taj Mahal Review,
December 2003! May every day of this New Year bring you
Happiness, Love and Prosperity. Happy New Year! I'm greatly
indebted to all the authors, who with their subscription and
friendliness made this issue number four possible. Here are
several poetic voices trying to unravel "the burthen of
the mystery, \ the heavy and the weary weight \ Of all this
unintelligible world." The multiple ways connect these
poets, short-story tellers and essayists together. A global
feel with artists around the world .It is my earnest hope that
the impulses, desires, a few admonitions, some brilliant,
acute observations will surely comfort our world tormented by
the insolence of violence, terrorism, "the whips and
scorns of time." Again, I offer my sincere thanks and
obligation to the generous artists, who through their kind
donations and subscriptions helped us in bringing out this
issue.
SANTOSH KUMAR
Editor
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Postmodernism
Prof. Bill
Sherman from NJ, USA is Ph.D. in English & American
literature. He has taught at the University of Hull and The
University College of Wales. He is the author of Tahitian
Journals: In Search Of Taata Mata, published in London by
Hearing Eye Press and Editor of Branch Redd Review. Eric
Mottram says, "A certain wry self-knowledge surfaces in
William Sherman's letters, and its humour and obsession
articulates his writing."
These
letters by Bill Sherman deal with Postmodernism, one of the
most vital issues in contemporary aesthetics.
Letter
# 1
Dear
Dr. Kumar,
TMR#3 arrived
today. As always,
your publications are beautifully produced.
It was a bit of a shock (albeit a good one) to see my
gall-filled peevish (hard not to be peevish in "the belly
of the beast" as Che had put it) Letters in print, but
perhaps they will take a reader or two to some of the work and
issues involved, alluded to...Even though I am now getting up
in years, I still hope that I might return to India someday
before biting the dust, and if you ever want to set up any
lectures/readings/seminars, please don't hesitate to get in
touch.....Thank you again for your care, especially in the
proof-reading and properly printed phraseologies/spellings of
the Letters, and in the Notes section, where you make me
appear rather distinguished.
As they say on Rapa Nui (Easter Island):
We
Are Nothing, I Salute You!
Letter # 2
.your question
as to postmodernism, there are so many descriptions and
definitions, the best of which DISCLOSE rather than
"describe" and you would have to elaborate further
for me to comment on your saying it is a "disturbance
from within"....I have found Jean-Francois Lyotard's
text, THE POSTMODERN CONDITION useful,
as well as an anthology first published in the 1960's
and titled THE STRUCTURALIST CONTROVERSY.
Charles Olson, an American poet and historian, believed
that the postmodern would come to mean a fullness rather than
a fragmentation, but he would be in the minority in this
respect. Personally,
I believe that which we have called Modernism began to come to
a conclusion with the death of Yeats (1939), the beginning of
World War 2, the extermination camps, the use of nuclear
weapons; but it is all a continuum, is it not?
And one cannot view it as a linear development from
modernism, since, in poetry, the work of Fernando Pessoa
is quintessentially postmodern, and he died in 1935.
Paul Celan would also serve as an example of a
postmodern poet....Someone once said: The Postmodern?
Can't we find a better word than that!
Are we still stuck in the 19th century with
impressionist/post-impressionist?
Letter
# 3
I don't
know the book to which you refer (Charles Jencks) but yes, it
makes a kind of sense. As
Lyotard in The Postmodern Condition: A Report On Knowledge,
writes: the postmodern "denies itself the solace of good
forms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible
to share collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable...it
searches for new presentations not in order to enjoy them but
in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable."
re: Shakespeare, all great artists transcend
categorization. Postmodern
is a convenient label to be used if helpful.
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