रह-रह कर आज साँझ मन टूटे

The Poet

नरेश सक्सेना

Naresh Saxena

1939 · 2001

Naresh Saxena holds a singular and fascinating position in contemporary Hindi literature as a man who brought the exactitude of science into the heart of poetry. Born in 1939 in Gwalior and trained as an engineer, he did not publish his first poetry collection, Samudra Par Ho Rahi Hai Baarish, until he was sixty one years old. Yet, his literary presence had already been firmly established through decades of publication in prestigious journals. Saxena writes with a unique physiological and environmental awareness. He constructs his poems not out of abstract romanticism, but from the physical mechanics of the natural world and the complex realities of modern survival. His language is spare, precise, and completely devoid of unnecessary ornamentation. Alongside his poetry, he is an acclaimed playwright whose drama Aadmi Ka Aa has been staged thousands of times, and a filmmaker who won a National Film Award for his directorial work. He demonstrates that a poet does not need to abandon the rational world to understand the human soul.