Description: Surdas--and his remarkable lyrics refashioning the widely known narrative of the Hindu deity Krishna and his lover Radha--has been regarded as the epitome of artistry in Hindi verse from the end of the sixteenth century to the present day. This award-winning translation of Sur's Ocean reconstructs the early tradition of Surdas's poems.
Brief description: John Stratton Hawley is an award-winning translator and scholar of religious studies. He has written extensively on the bhakti movement and is the Claire Tow Professor of Religion at Barnard College, Columbia University.
Review Quotes: Surdas, the wildly popular sixteenth-century composer of these poems, reworked well-known stories of Krishna as a child, a butter thief, a cowherd, a heartbreaker, and a charismatic deity into a new oral literary tradition. Translated into a slightly antiquated but colloquial English that passes for contemporary speech while reminding us of the distance between our time and the time in which these poems were sung, John Stratton Hawley miraculously manages to braid the charged erotic and divine qualities of Krishna, the many-named god, while introducing us--with subtle occasional rhyme--to a vividly particularized world of prayers and crocodile earrings, spiritual longing and love-struck bees.--Forrest Gander, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry