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Stray Birds

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First published: 1916
Pages: 339

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About this book

Something between poetry and aphorism: more than three hundred fragments, most of them a line or two long, which Tagore published in 1916 after a season of travel that took him to Japan. Birds, rivers, lamps, dust, and sleep return again and again, and the pieces read like notes made by a mind that stopped mid-walk to catch a thought before it got away. Some console, some cut, and a few come close to jokes. The brevity misleads. Several of these lines have outlived far longer poems and are still quoted by people who could not name their source. For anyone meeting Tagore for the first time, this is the easiest door in.

About the author

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a Bengali poet, composer, painter, and thinker whose reshaping of literature and music left a lasting mark on the subcontinent. In 1913 he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and he wrote the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh.