Re-reading Jayanta Mahapatra is a selection of the seminal poems of poet Padmashree Jayanta Mahapatra, meticulously selected by Indian English poet Professor Nandini Sahu, with a long critical introduction by her. The book highlights the quality of tranquility and quietude about his poetry, and celebrates the nostalgic elements of Mahapatra’s poetry. While the book hardly confines him as a ”Romantic’, as he is not prepared to accept the capability of romantic imagination-the book problematizes Mahapatra’s dismissal of the term ‘romantic’ vis-à-vis himself. . Nandini argues, his poetry reveals a self that is secluded and withdrawn, but it is romantic to the core. Mahapatra began his poetic career as a poet of love. His earlier poetry tried to capture the multiple facets of love, so as to relate it to the redolent conformation of life. Even if Mahapatra is ‘rueful’ about his beginning as a love poet, yet it is through his love poetry that he could learn how to establish a rapport with the cultural tradition in his later poetry. Nandini venerates his poetry; as a fellow poet herself, she is proud of belonging to the historiography of Indian English poetry that Mahapatra shaped. His poetry has been the poetry of departure into the self, like a Pantheist, where it is unadorned, moving and still, sans pretense and insincere masks.

Sahitya Akademi award winning book, Relationship is a trend setter that takes us back to the time of making of the canon in Indian English poetry– how Indian English poetry evolved in and around Jayanta Mahapatra who arrived in the poetry scene in 1971 with the title, Close the Sky Ten by Ten. In the 1970s his poems were published in major poetry journals in the world and he earned accolades from different shores. During the 1970s Jayanta was invited to read poems from many important places including, University of Iowa, Iowa City, 1976, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, 1976, University of the South, Sewanee, 1976, East West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1976, P.E.N. Centre, Sydney, 1978 and Australian National University, Canberra, 1978. These made valuable grounds for making him a significant poetic voice in the decades to come. A Rain of Rites appeared from the University of Georgia Press, USA in 1976. Vernon Young praised the work in The Hudson Review, and later Emily Grosholz reviewed both Relationship and The False Start in the same New York journal. Poetry (Chicago) published a review of his books and it was done by the poet Dick Allen. His publications were noticed by Paul Engle, poet and Director of the International Writing Program in Iowa, and he invited Jayanta to be a participating poet from India for 1976. It was a significant phase for Jayanta, 1975-1976, because it coincided with the publication of his collection of poems, A Rain of Rites, from the University of Georgia Press, Athens, USA. During these days his manuscript was chosen from among the many poetry manuscripts submitted to the University by the final reader and editor, George Core, who is, and has been the Editor of the literary quarterly, The Sewanee Review. In 1976 he was in Iowa city, with twenty other writers from different countries.