Devadatta's Poems
Judith Beveridge
Devadatta's Poems complements the sequence 'Between the Palace and the Bodhi Tree', published in Beveridge's earlier collection Wolf Notes, which followed the travels of Siddhattha Gotama before he became the Buddha, and portrayed the world from his disciplined and ascetic point of view. These new poems are written from the viewpoint of Devadatta, Siddhattha's jealous and ambitious cousin, who attempted to murder him three times. They are marked by an extraordinary richness of language and detail, and a dedication to sensation, which is in contrast to Siddhattha's purity, and caused at least in part by Devadatta's desire for Yasodahra, his cousin's wife.