Our knowledge of Sri Aurobindo the philosopher may remain incomplete without our knowledge of Sri Aurobindo the poet

Sri Aurobindo’s Collected Poems
from sunayana.com Most people think that one bids goodbye to poetry when one steps out of the student life. This may be why poems don’t usually form a part of our general reading. Sunayana Panda

A combination of factors has made the poems of Sri Aurobindo so little appreciated. Firstly, among his followers, especially the Indians, there are very few who are familiar with the subtleties of English poetry. Secondly, even among those few who do take pleasure in reading poetry, an even smaller number would turn to the poems gathered in Collected Poems, as they don’t belong to the kind of poetry which the modern reader is used to. Then for those who do not know much about Sri Aurobindo the reputation of his prose works as being rather difficult to understand without close study may lead them to assume the poetry of this yogi must be incomprehensible to the common man. There may also be a certain impression in their minds that he probably wrote poetry as a pastime after he had become a yogi...

We can open the Collected Poems and take delight in the many-coloured emotions, in full bloom here, of one whose high thoughts we usually have to grapple with. Perhaps knowing his feelings through his poetry may help us to understand his thoughts better. Perhaps our knowledge of Sri Aurobindo the philosopher may remain incomplete without our knowledge of Sri Aurobindo the poet. ‘Love & Death’