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By Edgar Wolfe Assistant Professor of English
RAO'S POEMS, by P. Gangadhara Rao, Padma Publications, Madras, India, 1960, 64pp.
Surprising it may seem that a book of poems published in Madras, India, during the past year should contain at least seven poems directly concerned with the University of Kansas. There is, for instance, a poem conveying certain impressions of the Hawk's Nest, including some uncomplimentary to the hamburgers and the spaghetti, and another celebrating the Union's Music Room, where the music seems to "make people stick/ To the chairs as if stuck" and where sometimes one is made aware of a "humanitarian friend/ Who loves to cut and collect/ All the news ardently/ Before the others read."
The author is Mr. P. Gangadhara Rao, who was a graduate student here four years ago. The book is prefaced with an excellent short critique by Kenneth S. Rothwell, assistant professor of English, and Mr. Rao in a poem called "Thanks" mentions appreciatively both Prof. Rothwell and "The kind, considerate" Prof. Arvid Shulenberger, also of the KU English Department. Rao liked the University and hated to leave, even though he tells how deeply hurt he was in the town when "At some places to eat/ They refused me to serve/ Because I am black." At such times, apparently, he refused to try to gain service "By telling them/ That I am from India/ I am a human first/ And an Indian next." In spite of his bitter experience with discrimination,Mr. Rao concludes: "I saw many places/ As I know many people/ But you are the best/ I like you most."
Mr. Rao is a genuine poet and even his often unidiomatic use of English has an engaging quality. His verses are generally brief, cryptic, and personal, revealing a feeling toward life which is kindly and appreciative, stoical and yet optimistic, in spite of his being acutely aware that the individual's life must terminate.
Many of his poems are concerned with the mystery of Time and that mechanism of measurement, the "damned clock," which whether it works properly or not "watches others carefully/ Like a boss in the chair." Best perhaps of the poems concerned with the time-beset nature and the brevity of our lives may be this one:
Wind is singing with its melodious voice
Rose is looking with her bridal eyes
Thought is wondering of its wonderful past
1 nought is wondering of its wonderful pas
Time is shouting with its brutal voice
Devil is waiting, malicious watch dog
Another favorite theme is that of love, not only the love of woman but the love of life, mankind, the world, and nature. "I, the platonic lover," he calls himself in one place, but he is more than platonic when he writes:
Machine without motion
Life without love
Man without mission
Life without love
Love without lust
Terrible.
Perhaps the humane gentleness which is most characteristic of Rao is best revealed in this poem:
Where there is
No anger and jealousy
No envy and enmity
No pride and vanity
No remorse and resentment
Lead me kindly there
Lead me kindly there
Where there is
Harmony and humanity Love and sympathy Unity and understanding Courtesy and kindness Lead me kindly there Lead me kindly there.
I would like to assure Mr. Rao that they mean something to me.
I hope he continues to write.
I am very glad that something pushed Mr. Rao (as he would say) to "stretch" his "imagination/ to color white surface" with his "mysterious feelings/ Which do mean nothing/ Many a time/ To others."
University Daily Kansan
Anti-Nixon Reporters?
Several newsmen are scheduled to become targets of GOP attack in this session of Congress for their coverage of the Presidential election.
The complaints, centered largely among Republican members of the House, will use members of the Washington press corps as primary targets. . .
A tip-off to what may come is contained in comments made by Vice President Nixon to friends since the election. His verdict: biased reporting cost him the election, especially in Illinois and Missouri. . . .
MR. NIXON simply "cut off" from his party list a large number of reporters who formerly were invited to his affairs. He makes little effort to disguise his resentment toward them, and, at the same time, his shock at their attitude.
As for Washington newsmen, they are accustomed to be scape goats. Most feel that if Senator Kennedy got the better press in the election (and most will not even grant this) it was only turnabout and fair play for the treatment given Democratic candidates in earlier years. Furthermore, many feel they had little to do with the outcome, that Nixon foredoomed his fate when he elected to debate with Kennedy.
Elaborating on his previous remarks, Mr. Klein told E&P this week that Mr. Nixon felt some reporters had applied a double standard to the candidates.
"It is not important that the reporters were overwhelmingly Democrats," Mr. Klein said. "What is important is that they let their feelings affect their copy. Some of them were definitely biased against the vice president."
BUT NEWSMEN here do have a practical cause for concern. There are rumors that Nixon aide Jim Shepley, on leave as head of Time magazine's domestic correspondents, compiled a "little list" during the campaign of reporters, noting their attitudes, overheard remarks about Nixon and what they had written. . .
Speaking to Republican Club members at West Palm Beach, Fla., the man who headed the GOP's Operation Dixie charged that reporters who abandoned objectivity "and were working for the opposition through their writing" were responsible for Mr. Nixon's defeat. . .
He accused many reporters who are members of the Newspaper Guild of "reflecting the viewpoint of labor bosses who have been trying for years to pin the big business label on the Republican Party."
"To expect some of these reporters to report objectively," he declared, "is a little like assigning a fox to guard the chickens."
In his view, columnists have the right to be biased "if they come by it honestly."
Mr. Klein emphasized that the main objection was to the enthusiasm which some of the press built up for Kennedy and showed up in their copy.
"We have the biased stories," he said. "We know it happened. It was a general thing although it did not affect all the reporting. They would be with Kennedy a while, then would come over to us and would be harder on us than they were on him."
(Excerpted from a news story in the Jan. 7, 1961, Editor & Publisher.)
There is no use worrying about Julius Rosenwald's adage of forty years ago that "endowed cats catch no mice." Today we should remind ourselves that unendowed cats seldom win blue ribbons—Harold J. Seymour
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Friday, Jan. 13, 1961
WASHINGTON — (UPI) — Douglas Dillon has indicated to Senators considering his nomination as treasury secretary that he would like to see top income tax rates cut as part of a general tax review.
Dillon Indicates Top Income Tax Cuts
The first of President-Elect John F. Kennedy's cabinet appointees to appear before Congress, Dillon also said he has "liquidated" his investment banking business interests and placed his remaining stocks in a special trust to remove any possible conflict of interest.
Nixon Is Labeled Man of Good Will
BALTIMORE — (UPI) — Richard Cardinal Cushing, the Archbishop of Boston, said Wednesday he would unhesitantly name Vice President Richard M. Nixon the good will man of 1960.
The prelate noted that during the recent presidential campaign the vice president "never exploited the religious or any other issue that would tend to divide the American people."
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