epicpinkfluffyunicorn's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
5.0
my fave poet
shinheiba_sm's review
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.25
premxs's review
5.0
Poetry that is exquisitely crafted, touched by the tender melancholy that so many go through, translated with such reverence, such sadness for humankind
mveldeivendran's review
Unaware of it's contextual circumstances in most of the poems upon which they might have been penned, I read these like it was written by me witnessing the people around me, and wrote for them. I read my book as Agha Shahid Ali. I'm the Shahid who never knew what it's like to live in an exiled land and watch the home experience the generations of longings and violence. I'm the Shahid who never meant well for everyone and everything for even the gods who must be lonely and in despair watching the world burning in the names of their very own. I'm the Shahid who never experienced the immense sentiments of words written on a postcard in my childhood. I'm the Shahid who never knew what it's like to forgive the universe which lets me get used to the universe without my beloved peoples. Maybe I, Shahid someday will experience all these things in my own way or maybe I won't. But I knew him and lived quite a life in his words. I'm Agha Shahid Ali.
"And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee—
God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight."
"And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee—
God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight."
lavaurora's review
5.0
Grief sprouts, spreads over your earth / on the night of the afternoon sun, a bloom.
bankrupt_bookworm's review against another edition
5.0
"Kashmir shrinks into my mailbox,
my home a neat four by six inches.
I always loved neatness. Now I hold
the half-inch Himalayas in my hand.
This is home. And this the closest
I’ll ever be to home. When I return,
the colors won’t be so brilliant,
the Jhelum’s waters so clean,
so ultramarine. My love
so overexposed.
And my memory will be a little
out of focus, in it
a giant negative, black
and white, still undeveloped."
RATING: ?/?
I was introduced to Agha Shahid Ali for the first time in 2015 when I was 15. There was a piece by Amitav Ghosh in one of my English textbooks, an incredibly moving tribute to Shahid, titled "The Ghat of the Only World" after one of latter's popular poems. It was not prescribed to us but—following a childhood habit of finishing my new books before classes began every year—I read it on a whim. I was familiar with Ghosh himself, although I had not read him yet, and he had penned an intensely emotional farewell to a poet he very clearly admired. I could vicariously experience Ghosh's grief easily. It felt like a beloved friend of my own had died. After finishing the essay, I googled up Shahid and found some of his poems online. Soon I was lost in his words, clicking one link after another in an attempt to read everything. Shahid remained dormant in my mind, resurfacing when I needed him.
It was not until I college that I finally decided to get his works. I went with The Veiled Suite as it promised to contain all his life's work. I read it in a week in April 2018. I was shifting constantly between a desire to devour it and a need to prolong my reading experience. On turning the last page, it was abundantly clear that I was madly in love. I have been reading for more than ten years now and it is rare that I admire a writer so much. Shahid was a balm. He was spiritual sustenance, food for the soul. Here was someone who could melt grief into words, turn language into a rosary of remembrance. He could distil ephemeral human emotions, extract their essence, and then reproduce them. History and memory were always at war in his verses. His poetic eye incisively cleaved to the bone. Shahid's poems combined technical expertise with creative ingenuity, each one a masterpiece.
Kashmir is a central presence in his writing, even though, by then, he had made America his second home. Shahid's poems don't just recount the troubles visited upon his beloved homeland and its people. To him, that would have been pointless. He instead transforms that long ledger of loss into rage-filled and despair-laden poetic endeavours. He takes full advantage of his rich cultural heritage by providing all his poems with an inexhaustible interpretive landscape. Shahid touches upon the themes of journey and exile, politics and myth, death and mourning. He unexpectedly moves from sorrow to joy and indifference to compassion, maintaining an intricate control over language which is inhuman. If I had to choose a single word to describe his verses, it would be "exquisite". He makes sadness beautiful but without cheapening it. A tender, reverential melancholy pervades the poems.
Shahid died of a brain tumour in 2001 at the age of 52, fourteen years before I first got to know about him. He was taken away early. It was an unfortunate death, a big blow to the world of literature. After every reread of TVS, I wonder what new direction his poetry could have taken next. I like to imagine an alternate world where Shahid survived, but I don't think he would have cared much for the US or India of today. Strange to say, but it is almost like we share an inexplicably weird affinity. I think I would have liked him had I gotten the opportunity to meet him. Perhaps, we could have had that really delectable Rogan Josh mentioned in Ghosh's essay. But all of that is just my idle wishful thinking, neither here nor there. I end with Shahid's own words, which I have taken the liberty to rearrange—"A night of ghazals comes to an end. Mad heart, be brave for the loved one always leaves."
PSA: As some of you would be aware, May 30th will mark the 300th day that Kashmir has been without 4G internet connectivity, at the direction of the union government of this country. Even Supreme Court has refused to take any concrete action on the matter. We must raise our voices to speak against this reprehensible measure and avoid becoming silent supporters of such blatant oppression.
my home a neat four by six inches.
I always loved neatness. Now I hold
the half-inch Himalayas in my hand.
This is home. And this the closest
I’ll ever be to home. When I return,
the colors won’t be so brilliant,
the Jhelum’s waters so clean,
so ultramarine. My love
so overexposed.
And my memory will be a little
out of focus, in it
a giant negative, black
and white, still undeveloped."
RATING: ?/?
I was introduced to Agha Shahid Ali for the first time in 2015 when I was 15. There was a piece by Amitav Ghosh in one of my English textbooks, an incredibly moving tribute to Shahid, titled "The Ghat of the Only World" after one of latter's popular poems. It was not prescribed to us but—following a childhood habit of finishing my new books before classes began every year—I read it on a whim. I was familiar with Ghosh himself, although I had not read him yet, and he had penned an intensely emotional farewell to a poet he very clearly admired. I could vicariously experience Ghosh's grief easily. It felt like a beloved friend of my own had died. After finishing the essay, I googled up Shahid and found some of his poems online. Soon I was lost in his words, clicking one link after another in an attempt to read everything. Shahid remained dormant in my mind, resurfacing when I needed him.
It was not until I college that I finally decided to get his works. I went with The Veiled Suite as it promised to contain all his life's work. I read it in a week in April 2018. I was shifting constantly between a desire to devour it and a need to prolong my reading experience. On turning the last page, it was abundantly clear that I was madly in love. I have been reading for more than ten years now and it is rare that I admire a writer so much. Shahid was a balm. He was spiritual sustenance, food for the soul. Here was someone who could melt grief into words, turn language into a rosary of remembrance. He could distil ephemeral human emotions, extract their essence, and then reproduce them. History and memory were always at war in his verses. His poetic eye incisively cleaved to the bone. Shahid's poems combined technical expertise with creative ingenuity, each one a masterpiece.
Kashmir is a central presence in his writing, even though, by then, he had made America his second home. Shahid's poems don't just recount the troubles visited upon his beloved homeland and its people. To him, that would have been pointless. He instead transforms that long ledger of loss into rage-filled and despair-laden poetic endeavours. He takes full advantage of his rich cultural heritage by providing all his poems with an inexhaustible interpretive landscape. Shahid touches upon the themes of journey and exile, politics and myth, death and mourning. He unexpectedly moves from sorrow to joy and indifference to compassion, maintaining an intricate control over language which is inhuman. If I had to choose a single word to describe his verses, it would be "exquisite". He makes sadness beautiful but without cheapening it. A tender, reverential melancholy pervades the poems.
Shahid died of a brain tumour in 2001 at the age of 52, fourteen years before I first got to know about him. He was taken away early. It was an unfortunate death, a big blow to the world of literature. After every reread of TVS, I wonder what new direction his poetry could have taken next. I like to imagine an alternate world where Shahid survived, but I don't think he would have cared much for the US or India of today. Strange to say, but it is almost like we share an inexplicably weird affinity. I think I would have liked him had I gotten the opportunity to meet him. Perhaps, we could have had that really delectable Rogan Josh mentioned in Ghosh's essay. But all of that is just my idle wishful thinking, neither here nor there. I end with Shahid's own words, which I have taken the liberty to rearrange—"A night of ghazals comes to an end. Mad heart, be brave for the loved one always leaves."
PSA: As some of you would be aware, May 30th will mark the 300th day that Kashmir has been without 4G internet connectivity, at the direction of the union government of this country. Even Supreme Court has refused to take any concrete action on the matter. We must raise our voices to speak against this reprehensible measure and avoid becoming silent supporters of such blatant oppression.
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