Dropping the Bow: Poems from Ancient India

by Andrew Schelling (Translator)

poems from ancient Sanskrit, tr Schelling

Genres: Poetry, India

79 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1991

About the author

Andrew Schelling is a poet, essayist, and translator of the poetry of India. He has taught at Naropa University for twenty years and from 1993–96 served as chair of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics founded by Alan Ginsburg and Anne Waldman. His publications include Tea Shack Interior and The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Reviews

[Krishna Sampath · Rating 5 out of 5]

A selection of stirring love poems translated from Sanskrit by Andrew Schelling. My favorite closes the anthology, and furnishes this slim volume with a name as well:

Lone buck
in the clearing
nearby doe
eyes him with such
longing
that there
in the trees the hunter
seeing his own girl
lets the bow drop
- Anonymous

[Rodney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Schelling's translations work so well as modern poems (compressed, colloquial, economical, and Imagistic) that you can start to grow a little suspicious: Did poets this distant in time and place really sound so much like us? Then again, the "us" sound sprung in no small part from the Modernist encounter with ancient non-Western literatures—Chinese, Japanese, even a sprinkling of "Shanti" in The Waste Land—so Schelling's deft bringing-over of yesteryear's Sanskrit giants into English is just the circle growing wider to stay unbroken.

The pocket size, new Preface, and generous Afterword make this new White Pine edition especially swell to get.

[David Sweet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dropping the Bow, Poems of Ancient India
translated by Andrew Schelling


I read Dropping the Bow while dropping a load. I had carried the book home and it sat on my shelf unopened until needing a book to accompany my time spent in the toilet. The short, Haiku like poems were an exceptional companion.
The poetry of ancient India, free from puritanical censorship, came across as honest and uncensored as Rumi, but with less of a metaphysical element. Many of the sensual love poems mirror Song of Songs, composed at a similar time. As an anthology of poems from vaporous authors, Mr. Schelling has kindly given short biographies of each. Though love is a central theme for most, also daily life, friendship, mensuration, and friendship fill the pages.
In short, the tiny book was worth the read. Listen to how Bhavabbuti masterfully describes the life of the poet in working with critics and reaching out into the universe.

Critics scoff
at my work
and declare their contempt—
no doubt they’ve got
their own little wisdom.
I write nothing for them.
But because time is
endless and our planet
vast, I write these
poems for a person
who will one day be born
with my sort of heart.


Or listen to the sensual nature of this poem that rivals Tagore:

Little gasps
of breath,
her eyelids barely parted,
bristling skin
and beads of sweat—

above love’s temple waves
love’s banner,
and I
can only bow my head
at the mysterious change
a woman
undergoes—


And the playfulness of Vacaspati, who seduces the reader,

Once again
you mount this playful
woman’s breasts and touch
the vendor region
along her thighs.
Closing one arm around you
she draws forth
your pleasure
with measured strokes
of her hand
Some other lifetime
what austerities
did you practice, O sitar,
to win this reward?


After finishing this book, I wanted to know more. I had skipped the Forward and Afterward as I normally do with books like this, but longed to learn more. Listen to Vidya's masterly crafted poem, the image, sound, and dramatic tension:

On makeshift
bedding in the cucumber
garden,
the hill tribe girl
clings to her
exhausted lover.
Limbs still chafing
with pleasure, dissolving
against him she
now and again with
one bare foot
jostles a shell necklace
that hangs from a
vine on the fence—
rattling it
through the night,
scaring the jackals off.

This little book, accessible and enjoyable to those who may not know anything of Indian literature or poetry, would find it an excellent companion on for their daily bowel movement.

[Avneet Kaur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short but poignant poems. You can tell each word was chosen carefully... I can only imagine how lovely they must sound in their original form.