Autumn Gleanings

Autumn Gleanings is a book of essays and critical comments on some distinguished poets of Bangladesh. The title of the book is suggestive of the author's mind as he nears his eighties. His critical mind has been active since 1976 when he published his first anthology of Bangladesh poetry, Three Poets which included selected poems of the three iconic figures in Bangladesh poetry - Shamsur Rahman, Al Mahmud and Shaheed Quaderi who created three distinct streams from which most of the later generations of poets have drunk. Incidentally, this was the first anthology of Bangladesh poetry in translation after Independence in 1971. The rest of the poets belong to the 60s and 70s. The comments are in most cases on their selected translated poems in English with the lone exception of Mohammad Nurul Huda's Behular Sari which is a whole volume. The book includes some essays on two of his favourite personalities - Humayun Ahmed and Abu Ishaque. While he remembers Humayun who makes us proud as the most popular novelist and playwright of his time, he evaluates Abu Ishaque more as a lexicographer of extraordinary caliber than a writer of fiction. Besides these, there are two significant essays on Tagore and Nazrul. While the essay on Nazrul introduces Nazrul's less known aspect of his world consciousness, the one on Tagore explores some of the sweetest strains in Tagore's songs on the mystic tradition of the sub-continent. A sensitive reader will feel in this book the approach more of an English autumn when the leaves turn pale and yellow and begin to fall on the ground to be driven away by the eternal wind.