Vasundhara

CRANES IN THE DROUGHT (Akaal mein Saras) which won the prestigious Sahitya Akademi award for the poet Kedarnath Singh in the year 1989, unravels racial memories on an exquisite philosophical plane. The note of displacement in some poems of this collection establishes a new kind of relationship with the folk life. Most of these poems are deeply embedded with a strong rope of interrogation, which leads to a pleasant blend of thought and feeling. Parallel to the urban tradition of New Poetry, he raised a poetic structure which had a beautiful blend of both the rural and the urban sensibilities. It is remarkable for its freshness of language and reflects the author’s intense zest with the common man. For its presentation of contemporary reality in a style remarkable for its skillful combination of the rhythms of free verse with compactness of meaning, this book is considered an outstanding contribution to modern Hindi literature.