National Poetry Month: American Poetry with Indian Themes

Left to right, Vice Consuls Kelly Kopcial and Kris Fresonke and Consul Fred Kaplan

April 25: From the Transcendentalists through the Beats and beyond, American poets have drawn inspiration from India. On April 25 in the American Library, Vice Consuls Kris Fresonke and Kelly Kopcial, in celebration of National Poetry Month in the United States, discussed with a few dozen writers, teachers and students the influence India has had on American poetry over the centuries. Ms. Fresonke and Ms. Kopcial chose to focus on the works of Walt Whitman (1819-1892) and Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997). In “Passage to India,” Whitman describes a mystical journey to an ancient land, “For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go, And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.” Ginsberg, like Whitman, saw India as a spiritual fountainhead, but he also made the physical journey to India and lived in Calcutta both in the early 1960s and early 1970s. Not only did Ginsberg write poems about India, he kept and published detailed journals about his experiences in the country.

For more resources on American writers and Indian themes, click here (PDF 115kb).