The World of Agha Shahid Ali

Description

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.
Preface
Agha Shahid Ali: A Chronology
Abbreviations

Introduction
Tapan Kumar Ghosh and Sisir Kumar Chatterjee

1. Ghazal for Open Hands
Martin Espada

2. Shahid, Some Memories
Peter Balakian

3. Somewhere without Me My Life Begins
Dara Wier

4. Beloved Witness, Beloved Friend
Maureen Nolan

5. Agha Shahid Ali: Notes and Anecdotes on the Growth of the Poet
Fatima Noori

6. "Separation's Geography": Agha Shahid Ali's Scholarship of Evanescence
Amy Newman

7. Agha Shahid Ali and the Ghazals in English
Sagaree Sengupta

8. "I will open the waves": Examining the Hybrid Forms in Agha Shahid Ali's Poetry
Abin Chakraborty

9. Out of Focus: Agha Shahid Ali's Queer Optics
Gayatri Gopinath

10. Beginnings: A Journey with Micronarratives
Amzed Hossein

11. Braiding Disparate Strands: Tracing the Arcs of Agha Shahid Ali's The Half-Inch Himalayas
Jason A. Schneiderman

12. Dialing a Joke: Agha Shahid Ali's Long-Distance Calls to Lands without a Post Office
Vedatrayee Banerjee

13. Archiving Absences: Charting Chronotopes in Agha Shahid Ali's Cartography of Desire
Deeptesh Sen

14. Tradition, Home, and Exile in Agha Shahid Ali'sThe Beloved Witness
Christine Kitano

15. "It Is This": Agha Shahid Ali's Representation of Kashmir in The Country without a Post Office
Claire Chambers

16. Epistemology of Mourning: A Reading of Rooms Are Never Finished
Sisir Kumar Chatterjee and Sinchan Chatterjee

17 Let Your Mirrored Convexities Multiply: On Agha Shahid Ali's "Tonight"
Kazim Ali

18. An Interview with Agha Shahid Ali
Suvir Kaul

Bibliography
About the Editors
About the Contributors
Index

Sujets

• India

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438484334
• Langue: English

Extrait

The World of Agha Shahid Ali
The World of Agha Shahid Ali
Edited by
TAPAN KUMAR GHOSH SISIR KUMAR CHATTERJEE
Original cover design by Debmalya Chatterjee
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ghosh, Tapan Kumar, editor | Chatterjee, Sisir Kumar, editor.
Title: The world of Agha Shahid Ali / edited by Tapan Kumar Ghosh and Sisir Kumar Chatterjee.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781438481456 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438484334 (ebook)
Further information is available at the Library of Congress.
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Contents
Preface
Agha Shahid Ali: A Chronology
Abbreviations
Introduction
Tapan Kumar Ghosh and Sisir Kumar Chatterjee
1 Ghazal for Open Hands
Martin Espada
2 Shahid, Some Memories
Peter Balakian
3 Somewhere without Me My Life Begins
Dara Wier
4 Beloved Witness, Beloved Friend
Maureen Nolan
5 Agha Shahid Ali: Notes and Anecdotes on the Growth of the Poet
Fatima Noori
6 “Separation’s Geography”: Agha Shahid Ali’s Scholarship of Evanescence
Amy Newman
7 Agha Shahid Ali and the Ghazals in English
Sagaree Sengupta
8 “I will open the waves”: Examining the Hybrid Forms in Agha Shahid Ali’s Poetry
Abin Chakraborty
9 Out of Focus: Agha Shahid Ali’s Queer Optics
Gayatri Gopinath
10 Beginnings: A Journey with Micronarratives
Amzed Hossein
11 Braiding Disparate Strands: Tracing the Arcs of Agha Shahid Ali’s The Half-Inch Himalayas
Jason A. Schneiderman
12 Dialing a Joke: Agha Shahid Ali’s Long-Distance Calls to Lands without a Post Office
Vedatrayee Banerjee
13 Archiving Absences: Charting Chronotopes in Agha Shahid Ali’s Cartography of Desire
Deeptesh Sen
14 Tradition, Home, and Exile in Agha Shahid Ali’s The Beloved Witness
Christine Kitano
15 “It Is This”: Agha Shahid Ali’s Representation of Kashmir in The Country without a Post Office
Claire Chambers
16 Epistemology of Mourning: A Reading of Rooms Are Never Finished
Sisir Kumar Chatterjee and Sinchan Chatterjee
17 Let Your Mirrored Convexities Multiply: On Agha Shahid Ali’s “ Tonight ”
Kazim Ali
18 An Interview with Agha Shahid Ali
Suvir Kaul
Bibliography
About the Editors
About the Contributors
Index
Preface
Agha Shahid Ali (1949–2001) holds a place of singular distinction as a poet in the ever-expanding Indian diaspora. Born in Delhi and brought up in Srinagar and Indiana, Shahid spent most of his adult life in the United States, and died there. It is thus not easy to define his nationality. He had a transnational background and multicultural affiliations. Kashmir, Delhi (old and new) and the United States feature prominently in his poetry, and he has drawn the geographic and cultural maps of these places like a nostalgist cartographer. Exile, separation, transience, limitless longing and loss (of home, history, and people one loves) recur in his poems, which weave past and present, tradition and modernity, myth and reality, and various historical, cultural, and religious strands as well as multiple personalities to create his unique identity. A citizen of a “country without a post office,” a country torn asunder by hatred and violence, Shahid sought throughout his poetic career to bridge gaps between cultures, languages, ethnicities, and religions. Communication, and the lack of it, between peoples and places were obsessive concerns of Shahid as a Kashmiri-American poet. He experimented with various European poetic forms, but his lasting contribution to poetry in English is the introduction of the oriental genre, ghazal —with its intricacies and mysteries—to Western readers. He inherited the “ravishing disunities” of the real ghazals from his literary predecessors in the East, and passed them on to his followers in the West. Beloved of all who knew and read him, Agha Shahid Ali grieved for suffering humanity, and his poetry bore witness to the mutating world in the last quarter of the twentieth century.
The present volume is a pioneering collection of essays that explore the world of this peerless poet. The first nine essays attempt to examine the personality, worldview, and poetic style of Agha Shahid Ali. Four of the contributors were intimate friends of Shahid and had seen him from close quarters. Their observation sheds crucial light on the poet’s character and temperament. The others probe little-known aspects of this transgeographic poet and his unique craft. The rest of the volume focuses on Shahid’s poetic oeuvre, including essays on individual collections of poems, from Bone Sculpture to Call me Ishmael Tonight.
This book is the first venture of its kind to critically analyze Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry at a close and comprehensive level and to put his hyphenated identity and transnational background into perspective. Most of his well-known poems are interpreted by the contributors, who also specify his roots, influences, and contribution. In sum, this anthology of essays is a useful addition to the growing discussion of Agha Shahid Ali as a poet.
A number of people have helped us bring out this volume. We are grateful to them and to the contributors from India and abroad who have submitted well-researched articles to this collection. We are deeply indebted to Professor Suvir Kaul for permitting us to reprint his interview with Agha Shahid Ali, which was recorded at the Mass Communications Research Center, Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi, in August 1997. We acknowledge our special debt to the editors of SUNY Press, especially James Peltz and Christopher Ahn, as well as to Patricia O’Neill, Dara Wier, Gayatri Gopinath, the SUNY Press–commissioned anonymous reviewers of the initial versions of our manuscript, Somnath and Sipra Ghosh, and Krishna Chatterjee and Vedatrayee Banerjee, without whose whole-hearted cooperation this book would never have seen the light of the day or attained its level of quality.
Tapan Kumar Ghosh Sisir Kumar Chatterjee
Agha Shahid Ali
A Chronology
1949 Agha Shahid Ali was born in New Delhi on February 4 to Agha Ashraf Ali and his wife Sufia. Shahid’s father’s family was from Srinagar in Kashmir; his mother was from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh. They were Shia Muslims. Shahid’s ancestors had come to Kashmir from Central Asia. They were trained as hakims (practitioners of Unani medicine) and appointed as court physicians of Kashmir. His great grandfather was the first Kashmiri Muslim to matriculate, and his grandmother was the Inspector of women’s schools. She knew four languages: Urdu, Farsi, Kashmiri, and English.
1961 Agha Ashraf Ali, then the principal of Teachers’ College in Srinagar, traveled to the United States with his family to complete a PhD in Comparative Education at Ball State Teachers College in Muncie, Indiana. Shahid was twelve years old. For the next three years he attended school in Indiana.
1964 The family returned to Srinagar. Shahid attended an elite Irish Catholic school.
1968 Shahid earned his BA degree from the University of Kashmir.
1970 He joined Hindu College in Delhi University for studies toward an MA in English literature. He passed with distinction and went on to become a lecturer at the same college. He served this college from 1970 to 1975.
1972 His first collection of poems, Bone-Sculpture , was published by professor P. Lal’s Writers Workshop in Calcutta.
1976 Shahid returned to the United States.
1979 In Memory of Begum Akhtar and Other Poems was published by the Writers Workshop.
1981 Earned his MA in English from Pennsylvania State University.
1982 Received Breadloaf Writers’ Conference scholarship.
1983 Won Academy of American Poets prize and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowship.
1983–1985 Served as Communications Editor, JNC Companies, Tucson, Arizona.
1984 Earned a PhD at Pennsylvania State University.
1985 Earned a Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona.
1987–1993 Taught as Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Hamilton College, New York.
1986 Publication of his PhD thesis, T. S. Eliot as Editor .
1987 Publication of The Half-Inch Himalayas and A Walk Through the Yellow Pages .
1987 Received Ingram Merrill Foundation Fellowship.
1987–1993 Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at State University of New York.
1991 Publication of A Nostalgist’s Map of America . Shahid wrote the poems in the anthology in the years he began a close friendship with poet James Merrill.
1992 Publication of The Beloved Witness: Selected Poems and The Rebel’s Silhouette: Selec