{"id":2647,"date":"2010-10-28T10:00:25","date_gmt":"2010-10-28T14:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=2647"},"modified":"2010-10-29T16:38:13","modified_gmt":"2010-10-29T20:38:13","slug":"writing-home-to-catch-a-ghazal-three-poems-from-agha-shahid-ali%e2%80%99s-the-half-inch-himalayas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/28\/writing-home-to-catch-a-ghazal-three-poems-from-agha-shahid-ali%e2%80%99s-the-half-inch-himalayas\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Home | To Catch a Ghazal: Three Poems from Agha Shahid Ali\u2019s THE HALF-INCH HIMALAYAS"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
THE HALF-INCH HIMALAYAS (1987, Wesleyan University Press)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Because of his status in American poetry as the prophet of the ghazal, it is especially interesting to look at Agha Shahid Ali\u2019s earlier work. Moving backwards from the ghazal collection Call Me Ishmael Tonight<\/em><\/a> (2003), through the long-lined, historically-alluding collections like The Country Without a Post Office<\/em><\/a>, to his early poems, particularly The Half-Inch Himalayas<\/em><\/a> (1987), the lines get shorter, the line breaks more jarring, the punctuation more irregular and the language more personal.<\/p>\n

This poetics runs in tandem with speakers who have fallen out of time. \u201cA Lost Memory of Delhi\u201d places the speaker in a time where \u201c[he is] not born\u201d and he his watching his newly-wed parents: \u201c[His] father \/ He is younger than [him]\u201d and \u201c[his] mother is a recent bride.”\u00a0 Moreover, \u201cThey don\u2019t they won\u2019t \/\/ hear [him],\u201d making it clear that that the speaker has come unpinned from time and has floated back to a memory that could not possibly be his and in which he is attempting to interrupt \u201cthe night of [his] being.\u201d But this is true of the parents, too, even though they are bound in a more discreet time and space where they are able to interact with each other. The house that they enter \u201cis always faded in photographs\u201d and oil lamp that lights it that speaker \u201csaw broken in the attic.\u201d The past-perfect, in this case, is treated like the present.\u00a0 In this space where the past coexists with the future and the future coexists with the past, it is the present that is absent, the present from which the speaker has fallen out into a non-presence, where he cannot be perceived.<\/p>\n

Later on in the collection, in \u201cVacating an Apartment,\u201d this idea of imperceptibility and ghostliness reappears. The speaker is the voice of the now-absent (perhaps dead) previous tenant: \u201cThey ignore my love affair with the furniture \/ \u2026 \/ The landlord gives them my autopsy; \/ they sign the lease.\u201d In a third poem, \u201cSurvivor,\u201d the speaker\u2019s place in his mother\u2019s house has been supplanted by a strange sort of double: \u201cThe mirror gives up \/ my face to him \/\/ He calls to my mother in my voice \/\/ She turns.\u201d The primary tension in these poems comes from the speaker\u2019s presence, or rather, the dramatic irony of the fact that the others cannot see him and are carrying about their lives while he looks on.\u00a0 In \u201cA Lost Memory of Delhi\u201d the newly-weds are about to conceive a child; in \u201cVacating an Apartment\u201d a young, pregnant couple are signing a lease for an apartment; and in \u201cSurvivor\u201d the speaker\u2019s mother is enjoying a different son. The primary action in the poem does not involve the speaker, cutting the poems into two halves that the speaker is reaching to reconcile but cannot.<\/p>\n

The exploration of dual times, spaces and identities that was previously handled through Ali\u2019s short lines and the delay caused by abrupt line breaks in his free-verse poems would seem to lead directly to the appropriation of the ghazal form. The ghazal that yokes unrelated couplets to coexist through a unifying refrain and preceding rhyme. Interestingly, the multiplicities can now coexist peacefully, and the tension is merely the momentary delay, through the long lines, in the reconciliation of the refrain at the end of the couplet.\u00a0 Consider these examples:<\/p>\n

from \u201cOf It All\u201d<\/p>\n

After Algebra there was Geometry\u2014and then Calculus\u2014
\nBut I\u2019d already failed the arithmetic of it all.<\/p>\n

White men across the U.S. love their wives\u2019 curries\u2014
\nI say O No! to the turmeric of it all.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuicide represents\u2026a privileged moment\u2026\u201d
\nThen what keeps you\u2014and me00from being sick of it all?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

from \u201cEven the Rain\u201d<\/p>\n

Of this pear-shaped orange’s perfumed twist, I will say:
\nExtract Vermouth from the bergamot, even the rain.<\/p>\n

How did the Enemy love you–with earth? air? and fire?
\nHe held just one thing back till he got even: the rain.<\/p>\n

This is God’s site for a new house of executions?
\nYou swear by the Bible, Despot, even the rain?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From \u201cIn Arabic\u201d<\/p>\n

At an exhibition of miniatures, what Kashmiri hairs!
\nEach paisley inked into a golden tress in Arabic.<\/p>\n

This much fuss about a language I don\u2019t know? So one day
\nPerfume from a dress may let you digress in Arabic.<\/p>\n

A \u201cGuide for the Perplexed\u201d was written\u2014believe me\u2014
\nBy Cordoba\u2019s Jew\u2014Maimonides\u2014in Arabic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because of his status in American poetry as the prophet of the ghazal, it is especially interesting to look at Agha Shahid Ali\u2019s earlier work. Moving backwards from the ghazal collection Call Me Ishmael Tonight (2003), through the long-lined, historically-alluding collections like The Country Without a Post Office, to his early poems, particularly The Half-Inch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[9],"tags":[142,430,431],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2647"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2766,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647\/revisions\/2766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}