The poet-saints Namdev (Devanagari: नामदेव) and Dnyaneshwar (Devanagari: ज्ञानेश्वर), from Maharashtra, India, wrote the earliest significant religious poetry in Marathi. They were born in 1270 and 1275, respectively. Namdev wrote over 400 verses in the abhang (अभंग) form. Dnyaneshwar composed his poetry in the owi (ओवी) form. His compositions, Dnyaneshwari (ज्ञानेश्वरी) and Amrutanubhawa (अमृतानुभव), consist of 9,037 and about 800 owis, respectively.
16th to 18th century
Eknath (एकनाथ, 1533 – 1599) was the next prominent Marathi poet.
Prominent poets from the 17th century include Tukaram, Mukteshwar, Ramdas, Vaman Pandit, Raghunath Pandit and Shridhar Pandit.
Moropant was a prominent poet of the 18th century. His Aryabhaarata (आर्याभारत) was the first epic in Marathi.
19th century
Early 19th century Marathi poetry consisted of powada (पोवाडे) ballads, phatake (फटके), and lavani (लावणी), which were composed by tantakavi (तंतकवि) or shahir (शाहीर). Prominent poets included Parasharam (परशराम), Honaji Bala (होनाजी बाळा), Anantaphandi (अनंतफंदी), Ram Joshi (रामजोशी), and Prabhakar (प्रभाकर).
The work of mid-19th century Marathi poets such as Krushnashastri Chiplunkar (कृष्णशास्त्री चिपळूणकर), Kunte (कुंटे), Lembhe (लेंभे), and Mogare (मोगरे) showed influences from both Sanskrit and English poetry.
In the late 19th century, Keshavasuta and Rev Tilak Narayan Waman Tilak (रेव्हरंड टिळक) produced poems influenced by English poets such as Wordsworth and Tennyson. They extended the horizon of Marathi poetry to encompass beauty in nature, love, romance, and mysticism as subjects.
20th century
Modern Marathi poetry began with Mahatma Jyotiba Phule's compositions. Later poets like Keshavsuta, Balakavi, Govindagraj, and the poets of Ravi Kiran Mandal, like Madhav Julian, wrote poetry that was influenced by Romantic and Victorian English poetry, being largely sentimental and lyrical. Prahlad Keshav Atre, a renowned satirist and politician, wrote a parody of this sort of poetry in his collection, Jhenduchi Phule.
The major paradigm shift in sensibility began in the 1940s with the avant-garde modernist poetry of BS Mardhekar. V.V. Shirwādkar, also known by his nom de plume Kusumagraj is considered to be one of the most important poets in the history of Marathi poetry. In the mid-1950s, the 'little magazine movement' gained momentum. It published writings which were non-conformist, radical and experimental. It also strengthened the Dalit literary movement, and in general many poets emerged from the 'little magazine movement'.
A major change in Marathi sensibility began in the 1990s with the antipostmodern criticism and postpostmodern poems of Shridhar Tilve. Shridhar Tilve brought to attention how the post-sixty generation is outdated, in his article "Chauta Shodh". His first collection of poems (Eka Bhartiya Vidyarthache Udgar) was published in 1991 by Popular Prakashan.
A 'new little magazine movement' gained momentum and poets like (Shridhar Tilve) Manya Joshi, Hemant Divate, Sachin Ketkar, Mangesh Narayanrao Kale, Saleel Wagh, Mohan Borse, Nitin Kulkarni, Nitin Arun Kulkarni, Varjesh Solanki, Sandeep Deshpande, Prafull Shiledar, Nitin Wagh and Dnyanda emerged. Publishers include Abhidhanantar Prakashan, Popular Prakashan and Granthali Prakashan.
A new wave in contemporary Marathi poetry is the poetry of non-urban poets like Arun Kale, Bhujang Meshram, Pravin Bandekar, Sandip Desai (संदीप देसाई) and Avinash Chavan (अविनाश चव्हाण).
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language predominantly spoken by Marathi people in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the official language of Maharashtra, and an additional official language in the state of Goa. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India, with 83 million speakers as of 2011. Marathi ranks 13th in the list of languages with most native speakers in the world. Marathi has the third largest number of native speakers in India, after Hindi and Bengali. The language has some of the oldest literature of all modern Indian languages. The major dialects of Marathi are Standard Marathi and the Varhadi dialect.
Marathi literature is the body of literature of Marathi, an Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in the Indian state of Maharashtra and written in the Devanagari and Modi script.
Arun Balkrishna Kolatkar was an Indian poet who wrote in both Marathi and English. He is known for writing poems which express the humor in everyday life. Kolatkar is the only Indian poet besides Kabir to be featured on the World Classics titles of New York Review of Books.
Dilip Purushottam Chitre was one of the foremost Indian poets and critics to emerge in the post Independence India. Apart from being a notable bilingual writer, writing in Marathi and English, he was also a teacher, a painter, a filmmaker and a magazine columnist.
Narayan Vaman Tilak was a Marathi poet from the Konkan region of then Bombay Presidency in British India, and a famous convert to Christianity from Chitpavan Brahmin Community.
The little magazine movement originated in the 1950s and 1960s in many Indian languages like Bengali, Tamil, Marathi, Hindi, Malayalam and Gujarati, in the early part of the 20th century.
Yashawant Dinkar Phadke was a historian and a political activist from Maharashtra, India.
Manohar Shankar Oak was a Marathi poet, novelist, and translator from Maharashtra, India.
Mangesh Keshav Padgaoankar was a legendary Marathi poet from Maharashtra, India.
Saleel Wagh is a Marathi poet, philosopher based in Pune.
Abhidhanantar was a literary magazine in the Marathi language primarily devoted to poetry. It was edited by Hemant Divate, a noted Marathi poet and publisher. It started as a little magazine called Abhidha in 1992 and in 1998 it was named Abhidhanantar because of registration issues. It was discontinued in 2009. Abhidhanantar, along with periodicals like Shabdavedh, Saushthav, Khel and Navakshar Darshan was in the tradition of the famous `little magazine movement’ in Marathi poetry pioneered by renowned poets like Dilip Chitre and Arun Kolatkar in the 1950s. The focus of this periodical was on the relationship between literature and globalization and it showcased the poetry which emerged from the social, cultural and linguistic crises brought about by globalization. Abhidhanantar was also honoured with the Maharashtra Foundation Award for its contributions to Marathi literature.
Shankar Vaidya was a Marathi poet and writer from Maharashtra, India. He was married to writer Sarojini Vaidya. He died on 23 September 2014 in Mumbai.
One Hundred Poems of Tukaram is a 2015 book consisting of selected poems of Sant Tukaram, a prominent Varkari Sant and spiritual poet of the Bhakti, translated into English by Chandrakant Kaluram Mhatre. The book also consists of an introduction by the translator, which explores aspects like relevance of Tukaram's poetry in twenty-first century, Tukaram's life and times, Varkari movement of which Tukaram was a part and the form of Tukaram's poems amongst other things. It aims at historicising Tukaram's poetry while upholding its timeless appeal. The book covers a wide range of poems depicting the spiritual as well as worldly journey of the saint-poet who is widely hailed as one of the greatest poets from India by critics like Ramchandra Ranade and Dr. Sadanand More. Selection of poems is such that the book gives a comprehensive picture of the various phases of Sant Tukaram's life which can be generally divided into that of a family man, a recluse and the man of the masses. So far this is only the second book-length translation of Tukaram's poems in English, the other being Dilip Chitre's Says Tuka (1991).
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
