Words are his passion dexterity with which he laces them with profound meaning & music makes Keshav Malik what he is, a poet par excellence. From beginning as a Literary Assistant to the former Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, to establish an independent foothold in the art & literary world. Padmashri Keshav Malik has come a long way indeed. A person of several facets, Malik's contribution to the Lalit Kala Academy as the honorary editor of its journal The Contemporary, is well known. But poetry is his first love. Poetry for him is filter which cleanses your entire being & makes you recover your lost self continuously. It is the only means by which a poet explores the cosmos, the great unknown, the gratifying entity which finally uplifts you.

"A poetry in fact is humbled by the cosmos, experiencing it is poet glory. Once the poet becomes aware of this greater reality he lets go of his lesser desire & enables his conscience". "Educating & sensitizing people's senses is his responsibility. He has to make others experience peace by enjoying the beauty of the soul delivered by his poetic sensibility", says Malik. Images that flood Keshav Malik's poetry are influenced by human conditions. Kathleen Raine describes his poetry as a "poetry of images, the vertiginous & perilous, the disquieting, earth's destiny in balance. Images, the vertiginous & perilous, the disquieting earth's destiny in balance. Image of the trivial & the beauty less imaginatively resolved into Indian spaciousness". "Such a mixture of images is necessary for a poet because he is a product of the timeless & a creations of his immediate circumstances". says Keshav. But it was only when Malik visited Europe that his poetic nature came to the forefront. "It was the strangeness of life in terms of the passage of time & morality which confronted me", says Malik.

But Malik is extremely concerned about the dangers that art faces. Art today is a mere means to earn recognition, satiation of ego rather than discourse of mind.  "Consumerism dwindles the stature of an artist's expression & artist who indulge in it are being untrue to their own creative power". says Malik for whom life has no meaning without art. Art glorifies life. There exists a dialectical relationship between the two. "An artist is a receptor of inner knowledge. He delivers to the world both the beauty & sadness of the soul, he gazes not only into the light but also at the terrible prophecy beyond the beautiful". Art for Malik are also the only agency which can renew purer feelings, evoke the civilized cultured world & bring back the scared hearts.