Modern Bengali Poetry: Desire for Fire

The seventh-most spoken language in the world, Bengali is home to some of the most distinctive poetry ever written anywhere.

Starting with the later poems of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, there has been a long and continuous line of modern poetry in the language, its span ranging from lyrical love poems to passionate political verse, from expressions of existential anguish to psychological explorations.

Modern Bengali Poetry celebrates over one hundred years of this poetry from the two Bengals—the eastern Indian state and the country of Bangladesh— represented by over fifty different poets and a multitude of forms and styles.