Agha Shahid Ali
Agha Shahid Ali
Books of Poetry (alphabetical).
Time Line.
Books.
Agha Shahid Ali featured in:
Best American Poetry: 1998
(guest editor John Hollander) with "The Floating Post Office"
(from The Country Without A Post Office).
In the notes Agha Shahid Ali writes about this sestina:
"Mine resisted the pentameter and settled into, most of the time, a tetrameter line".
Best American Poetry: 1997
(guest editor James Tate) with "Return to Harmony 3"
(from The Country Without A Post Office).
In the notes Agha Shahid Ali writes that this poem:
"is among my first attempts at a prose poem".
Great American Prose Poems
(editor David Lehman) with "Return to Harmony 3"
(from The Country Without A Post Office).
In the notes Agha Shahid Ali writes that this poem:
"is among my first attempts at a prose poem".
Books of Poetry (alphabetical)
The Country Without A Post Office.
Rooms are Never Finished
The Country Without A Post Office
Focuses on the political situation and uprising in Kashmir, where Ali was raised before emigrating to the USA.
Uses formal poetry to address the emotions of a politically chaotic situation.
From this volume his poem "Return to Harmony 3"
was selected for Best American Poetry: 1997
by guest editor James Tate).
In that anthology's notes Agha Shahid Ali writes that this poem:
"is among my first attempts at a
prose poem. My latest volume
[i.e. The Country Without A Post Office]
concentrates on traditional forms (the
sonnet,
pantoum,
canzone,
sestina,
villanelle,
terza rima,
ghazal.
It was while attempting these rather stringent forms that I stumbled on how I could do a
prose poem: by bringing to it all the energy I bring to open and
traditional forms but by making the sentence (and paragraph) rather than the line
(and stanza) the be-all and end-all of my emotion.
I had to teach myself to discard the line completely."
Rooms are Never Finished
Rooms are Never Finished:
features poems of exile, loss, and longing.
Organized into an introductory poem followed by four sections:
- A poem in 12 sections; many of these sections were published in poetry journals,
so presumably were written initially as independent poems and later assembled
into this multi-section poem.
- 10 poems, one of which has three sections, two of which were published separately in poetry journals,
and so may also be viewed as independent poems assembled into this multi-section poem.
- an 11-section poem "Eleven Stars Over Andalusia" which is his version of a poem
by Mahmoud Darwish.
This poem has the richest use of metaphor and imagery of all the work in this book.
While Ali's own poems are interesting in their use of form and rhyme and repetition,
the Darwish work is more glamorous, more adventurous, and in that sense more "poetic".
- The closing 8-page poem "I Dream I Am at the Ghat of the Only World".
For the first 25 poems
(the introductory poem, the 12 poems (treating each part separately) of Section I,
and the 12 poems (treating each part separately) of Section II) we have:
- 54 pages of poetry so 2.1 pages per poem.
- Usually a consistent number of lines per stanza, depending on his form; most commonly between
2 and 4 lines (2 lines/stanza for the ghazal,
3 lines/stanza for the terza rima,
4 lines/stanza for the quatrains).
Most of the poems are in form:
- Quatrain with a truncated 4th line (usually 5 stresses in each of the first three lines
and 2 stresses in the fourth line).
This is his most common form.
- The Ghazal (perhaps his second most common form),
where he rhymes (sometimes slant rhymes) on partial words as well as repeating words):
- [p.45-46] "Ghalib's Ghazal" which rhymes on "-aces"
[ashes, faces, places, spaces, effaces, raises, erases, palaces]
and writes each stanza in indented triplets (giving it the sense of juxtaposed 'haiku'
or 'tanka')].
- [p.57-58] "Ghazal" starting 'What will suffice for'
which rhymes on "-ot" followed by "even the rain"
[knot, bought, taught, forgot, what, got, Despot, ghat, lot, sought, plot, brought, Shahid].
Disappointing, though, that he does not acknowledge his debt elsewhere for
"not even the rain has such small hands".
- [p.68-69] "Ghazal" starting 'I do what I must'
which rhymes on "-old" followed by "in real time"
[bold, paroled, untold, controlled, hold, consoled, gold, sold, polled, enscrolled, unrolled, old, cold, unfold].
- [p.72-73] "Ghazal" starting 'In Jerusalem a dead phone'
which rhymes on "-iled" followed by "by exiles"
[dialed, exiled, filed, wild, compiled, beguiled, child, mild, Wilde, defiled, styled, child[again!], reconciled].
- Villanelle
(but in an amazing 'double' form with six 12-line stanzas and one 5-line envoy).
- Terza rima.
- Prose poem.
- Nonce forms such as a 9-stanza poem with stanza rhyme 'aabcdc'.
Acknowledges first publications in:
- Agni Review
- Ariel
- Boston Review (one of his ghazals).
- Colorado Review
- Grand Street
- Gulf Coast
- jubilat
- The Kenyon Review
- The Massachusetts Review
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- NEST: A Magazine of Interiors
- New England Review (including one of his ghazals).
- The Ontario Review
- The Paris Review
- Persimmon (one of his ghazals).
- The Southwest Review
- Tin House
- TriQuarterly (including one of his ghazals).
- Washington Square
- Yale Review (one of his ghazals).
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- 1949
- Born in New Delhi (February 4).
Subsequently moved to and grew up in Muslim Kashmir.
- 1972.
- 1st volume of poetry,
Bone Sculpture.
- 1979.
- Poetry:
In Memory of Begum Akhtar and Other Poems.
- 1984.
- In USA obtained a Ph.D. in English from Pennsylvania State University.
- 1985.
- In USA obtained an M.F.A. from the University of Arizona.
- 1987.
- Poetry:
A Walk Through the Yellow Pages.
- Poetry:
The Half-Inch Himalayas.
- 1991.
- Poetry:
A Nostalgist's Map of America.
- 1992.
- Poetry:
The Beloved Witness: Selected Poems.
- 1997.
- Poetry:
The Country Without a Post Office.
- 2001.
- Poetry:
Rooms Are Never Finished.
- Died 8 December 2001
as an American poet of Indian birth and Kashmiri upbringing,
having taught at
Baruch College,
Hamilton College,
Penn State,
Princeton University,
SUNY Binghamton,
the University of Delhi,
the University of Utah, and
Warren Wilson College.
- 2003.
- Posthumously, the University of Utah Press established The Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry,
which has become now an annual contest for publication of a poetry collection.
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Books on the Ghazal
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