'He had a magical gift for translating the familiar into the wonderful, by focussing on details or tweaking our programmed approaches to objects, people and relationships. In his poems, wry irony underpins the miracle of things seen and touched, people met and sized up...Kolatkar's poetry orchestrates a play of scales: the epic alternates with the intimate, the Self weaves through ... Read morethe Other. In Sarpa Satra, he assumed the alternately elegiac and excoriating voice of a private self beset by public terrors, tempted into cynicism but mandated to bear witness to history - Kolatkar addressed mythic themes that still resonate in India's public life - ecological devastation, the military occupation of farflung provinces, and the staging of pogroms' - Ranjit Hoskote, The Hindu. 'Kolatkar was a poet of world class with a very individual way of looking at the world. In his writing every cliche is transformed into something new and unexpected, a transformation by imagination, language, and tone - Bruce King, Modern Poetry in English. 'Moving deftly from street life in Bombay to Hindu myths, these last poems confirm his cult reputation as the greatest Indian poet of his generation' - Pankaj Mishra, Times Literary Supplement. Show Less