ABSTRACT
Varavara Rao (1940) is a well-known Telugu poet, critic, researcher, orator and an activist; one of the founders of Virasam (Revolutionary Writers Association). The essay titled “The Word is the World” is included in a collection of his articles in English translation titled Captive Imagination: Letters from Prison (2010). These essays were serialised in the Telugu daily Andhra Prabha. The genre of these letters is fluid and flexible shifting between prose and poetry. The Telugu original of the collection of these essays is titled Sahacharulu (1989). In genre and content, the essay establishes a different tradition and deconstructs the requirement of luxurious and sensuous ambience for writing poetry as defined by the classical Telugu poets. It is in the form of a soliloquy by an activist who is imprisoned. He contemplates that when the eyes that are supposed to see are forcibly shut down, they turn inward. When his world of activism is cut off from him, words become his world. The speech that sharply cuts the imposed silence is like a diamond. His words are like an unburdening song that stayed with him like a peacock feather pressed in a book during the time of his imprisonment. The essay not only transgresses the need for an ambience to write poetry but also violates the rules of the genre by merging prose and poetry.
