The Half Inch Himalayas

A stellar collection of early work from a renowned poet.

A stellar collection of early work from a renowned poet.

"An incomparable work, an unmatched achievement."—Anthony Hecht In this stunningly inventive collection—a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in poetry—Ali excavates the devastation wrought upon his childhood home, Kashmir, and reveals a more personal devastation: his mother's death and the journey with her body back to Kashmir.

In this study, ten independent critical essays and a coda explore the English-language poetry of South Asians in terms of time, place, themes and poetic methodologies. The transnational perspective taken establishes connections between colonial and postcolonial South Asian poetry in English as well as the poetry of the old and new diaspora and the Subcontinent. The poetry analysis covers the relevance of historical allusions as well as underlying concerns of gender, ethnicity and class. Comparisons are offered between poets of different places and time periods, yielding numerous sociopolitical paradigms that surface in the poetry.

Beginning with the impassioned, never-before-published title poem, here is the life's work of a beloved Kashmiri-American poet. Agha Shahid Ali died in 2001, mourned by myriad lovers of poetry and devoted students. This volume, his shining legacy, moves from playful early poems to themes of mourning and loss, culminating in the ghazals of Call Me Ishmael Tonight. The title poem appears in print for the first time. from "The Veiled Suite" I wait for him to look straight into my eyes This is our only chance for magnificence. If he, carefully, upon this hour of ice, will let us almost completely crystallize, tell me, who but I could chill his dreaming night. Where he turns, what will not appear but my eyes? Wherever he looks, the sky is only eyes. Whatever news he has, it is of the sea.

A star-studded anthology infuses English poetry with the rigor and wit of a foreign form. In recent years, the ghazal (pronounced "ghuzzle"), a traditional Arabic form of poetry, has become popular among contemporary English language poets. But like the haiku before it, the ghazal has been widely misunderstood and thus most English ghazals have been far from the mark in both letter and spirit. This anthology brings together ghazals by a rich gathering of 107 poets including Diane Ackerman, John Hollander, W. S. Merwin, William Matthews, Paul Muldoon, Ellen Bryant Voigt, and many others. As this dazzling collection shows, the intricate and self-reflexive ghazal brings the writer a unique set of challenges and opportunities. Agha Shahid Ali's lively introduction gives a brief history of the ghazal and instructions on how to compose one in English. An elegant afterword by Sarah Suleri Goodyear elucidates the larger issues of cultural translation and authenticity inherent in writing in a "borrowed" form.

Here Is A Haunted And Haunting Volume That Establishes Agha Shahid Ali As A Seminal Voice Writing In English. Amidst Rain And Fire And Ruin, In A Land Of `Doomed Addresses`, The Poet Evokes The Tragedy Of His Birth Place, Kashmir.

Featuring essays by American, Indian, and British scholars, this collection offers critical appraisals and personal reflections on the life and work of the transnational poet Agha Shahid Ali (1949–2001). Though sometimes identified as an "Indian writer in English," Shahid came to designate himself as a Kashmiri-American writer in exile in the United States, where he lived for the latter half of his life, publishing seven volumes of poetry and teaching at colleges and universities across the country. Locating Shahid in a diasporic space of exile, the volume traces the poet's transnationalist attempts to bridge East and West and his movement toward a true internationalism. In addition to offering close formal analyses of most of Shahid's poems and poetry collections, the contributors also situate him in relation to both Western and subcontinental poetic forms, particularly the ghazal. Many also offer personal anecdotes that convey the milieu in which the poet lived and wrote, as well as his personal preoccupations. The book concludes with the poet's 1997 interview with Suvir Kaul, which appears in print here for the first time.