AGHA SHAHID ALI The HalfInch Himalayas ALIs Background

AGHA SHAHID ALI The Half-Inch Himalayas

ALI’s Background • Born in India in 1949; grew up Muslim in Kashmir • Studied at the University of Kashmir and the University of Delhi • Earned a Ph. D. in English from Penn State in 1984 • Earned an M. F. A. from University of Arizona in 1985 • Prolific poet and professor (taught in the M. F. A. Creative Writing program at the University of Massachusetts) • Died December 8 th, 2001 of brain cancer

“You cannot cross-Examine the dead”

KASHMIR • Until the 19 th century, Kashmir was considered the valley region between the Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range • In 1949 it became a disputed territory, administered between three regions: India, Pakistan, and China

A PLACE of beauty and enormous political strife

THEMES IN ALI’S Poems • THE PAST (fixation with ancestry and history) • LOSS (of culture, of home, of identity, of stability) • SEPARATION (being away from home; home itself being separated and disjointed) • DISLOCATION (feeling displaced; in cultural limbo: Kashmiri-American) • EXILE (loss of home: feeling like a foreigner no matter where you go)

FOSTERIAN SYMBOL ANALYSIS • When you think of postcards, what comes to mind? Why might someone write an entire poem about a postcard?

“Postcards from Kashmir” 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, it in a giant negative, black and white, still undeveloped.

Discussion Questions • What is the significance behind the main conceit of the poem: the extended metaphor of the poetic speaker’s home —Kashmir and the Himalayas—being a postcard? • What do you make of the ironic, oxymoronic imagery (an entire country shrinking into a mailbox or the Himalayan mountain range being only a half an inch tall)? • What do you make of the juxtaposition of color imagery: the ultramarine Jhelum waters versus the black-and-white tones of a photo’s negative, especially in terms of theme of memory? • What is the overall tone of this piece, and what is the

FOSTERIAN SYMBOL ANALYSIS • When you think of your ancestors, what comes to mind? If you were to write a poem about your ancestors, what would you write about?

FOSTERIAN SYMBOL ANALYSIS • When you think of snowmen, what comes to mind?

SNOWMAN #1

SNOWMAN #2

YETI #1

YETI #2

“Snowmen” My ancestor, a man This heirloom, of Himalayan snow, his skeleton under my skin, came to Kashmir from passed Samarkand, from son to grandson, carrying a bag generations of snowmen on my of whale bones: back. heirlooms from sea funerals. They tap every year on my His skeleton window, carved from glaciers, his their voices hushed to ice. breath arctic, No, they won’t let me out of he froze women in his embrace. winter, His wife thawed into stony and I’ve promised myself, water, even if I’m the last snowman, her old age a clear

Discussion Questions • In the first stanza, what do you notice about the details that the poetic speaker uses to describe his ancestors, and what does this description reveal about the speaker’s perception of his ancestors? • In the second stanza, what do you make of the imagery of the “skeleton heirloom” under the speaker’s skin, his snowman ancestors riding on his back, and them tapping on his window? What does this contribute to our understanding of how he views his ancestry? • In the third stanza, what do you make of the imagery of the speaker riding into spring on his ancestors’ melting shoulders? • What is the overall tone of this piece, and what is the

The GHAZAL • 6 th century Pre-Islamic Arabic verse • Poetic expression of the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain • Form: five of more couplets (consistent meter) • Goethe made ghazals popular in 19 th century Germany • Agha Shahid Ali brought ghazals to the English language

“GHAZAL” I’ll do what I must if I’m bold in real time. A refugee, I’ll be paroled in real time. Cool evidence clawed off like shirts of hellfire? A former existence untold in real time. . . The one you would choose: Were you led then by him? What longing, O Yaar, is controlled in real time? Each syllable sucked under waves of our earth — The funeral love comes to hold in real time! They left him alive so that he could be lonely— The god of small things is not consoled in real time. Please afterwards empty my pockets of keys — And who is the terrorist, who the victim? We’ll know if the country is polled in real time. “Behind a door marked DANGER” are being unwound the prayers my friend had enscrolled in real time. The throat of the rearview and sliding down it the Street of Farewell’s now unrolled in real time. I heard the incessant dissolving of silk— I felt my heart growing so old in real time. Her heart must be ash where her body lies burned. What hope lets your hands rake the cold in rea time? Now Friend, the Belovèd has stolen your word —

WORKS CITED • Agha Shahid Ali - Poets. org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More. " Poets. org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More. N. p. , n. d. Web. 6 Apr. 2010. <http: //www. poets. org/poet. php/prm. PID/127>. • Ali, Agha Shahid. "Poetic Form: Ghazal - Poets. org Poetry, Poems, Bios & More. " Poets. org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More. N. p. , n. d. Web. 6 Apr. 2010. <http: //www. poets. org/viewmedia. php/prm. MID/5781 >.