Andrew Schelling is a North American poet and translator. He has published seven books of translations of classical Sanskrit and Prakrit poetry, including The Cane Groves of Narmada River and Dropping the Bow: Poems from Ancient India, which received the 1992 Academy of American Poets award for translation, the first time that association recognized work from an Asian language. Schelling’s poetry and essays have been published widely in the United States, and are recognized for their close attention to the orders of the natural world. His latest book, a folkloric account of California writing and ethnography, is Tracks Along the Left Coast: Jaime de Angulo and Pacific Coast Culture. He teaches poetry and Sanskrit at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.
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For thousands of years, the Indian subcontinent has proved a fertile ground for the world’s most captivating erotic love poetry and the genius of its devotional writing harnesses great energy and mystical insight. It is in fact often hard to tell whether the poets are offering poems of spiritual longing using the garments of love poetry or writing erotic pieces in the guise of devotion. Perhaps, in a land where erotic sculptures routinely ornament its many temples and gods are known for their explosive sexuality, this question has little meaning to these remarkable writers. In their devotional traditions, eroticism and mysticism seem inseparable.
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