Mad Heart Be Brave: Essays on the Poetry of Agha Shahid Ali

by Mohammed Kazim Ali

Overview

Born and raised in Kashmir, Agha Shāhid Ali (1949-2001) came to the United States in the mid-1970s to pursue graduate study in literature; by the mid-1980s, he had begun to establish himself as one of the most important American poets of the late 20th century.
 
Mad Heart Be Brave: On the Poetry of Agha Shāhid Ali is the first comprehensive examination of all stages of his career, from his earliest work published in India but never reissued in the U.S., through his seven poetry volumes from American publishers, ultimately collected as The Veiled Suite. The essays, written by a range of poets and scholars, many of whom knew and studied with Ali, consider his early free verse poetry; his transition into writing more formalist poetry; his correspondence with poets Anthony Hecht and James Merrill; his literary engagement with the political realities of contemporary Kashmir; his teaching and mentorship of young poets; and Ali’s championing of the ghazal, a traditional Eastern poetic form, in English. Some essays have a predominantly scholarly focus, while others are more personal in their tone and content. All exhibit a deep appreciation for Ali’s life and work.
 
Contributors to this volume include Sejal Shāh, Rita Banerjee, Amanda Golden, Ravi Shankar, Abin Chakraborty, Amy Newman, Christopher Merrill, Jason Schneiderman, Stephen Burt, Raza Ali Hassan, Syed Humayoun, Feroz Rather, Dur e Aziz Amna, Mihaela Moscaliuc, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Mahwash Shoaib, Shadab Zeest Hashmi, Grace Schulman, and Ada Limón. Mad Heart Be Brave closes with a long biographical sketch and elegy by Agha Shāhid Ali’s friend Amitav Ghosh and a comprehensive bibliography assembled by scholar Patricia O’Neill with Reid Larson.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780472053506
Publisher:	University of Michigan Press
Publication date:	04/17/2017
Series:	Under Discussion
Pages:	238
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Kazim Ali is Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Comparative Literature and Director of Creative Writing, Oberlin College.

Table of Contents

Introduction Kazim Ali 1

The World is Full of Paper. Write to Me Sejal Shah 12

Between Postindependence and the Cold War: Agha Shahid Ali's Publications with the Calcutta Writers Workshop Rita Banerjee 20

"This is an archive": Agha Shahid Ali's Postcards from Kashmir Amanda Golden 33

The Veiled Sweets: Agha Shahid Ali's Surprising Use of Humor Ravi Shankar 45

Beyond Borders, Nations, and Exclusivist Identities: Agha Shahid Ali's Poetics of Plurality Abin Chakraborty 55

"Separation's Geography": Agha Shahid Ali's Scholarship of Evanescence Amy Newman 71

"A Route of Evanescence": Agha Shahid Ali in America Christopher Merrill 88

The Loved One Always Leaves: The Poetic Friendship of Agha Shahid Ali and James Merrill Jason Schneiderman 99

Agha Shahid Ali, World Literature, and the Representation of Kashmir Stephen Burt 104

The Shifting Nationalisms, of Agha Shahid Ali's Poetry Raza Ali Hasan 118

Missing Home, Imagining Violence: Agha Shahid Ali's Engagement with Kashmir Syed Humayoun 129

Poet in Srinagar Feroz Rather 142

Requiem: Agha Shahid Ali's Last Canzone Dur E Aziz Amna 152

Palimpsestic Intertextualities in "A Lost Memory of Delhi" and "The Last Saffron" Mihaela Moscaliuc 156

Borrowed Words: The Use of Quotations and Italics in the Ghazals of Agha Shahid Ali Reginald Dwayne Betts 163

"The grief of broken flesh": The Dialectic of Desire and Death in Agha Shahid Ali's Lyrics Mahwash Shoaib 170

"Who will inherit the last night of the past?" Agha Shahid Ali's Architecture of Nostalgia as Translation Shadab Zeesr Hashmi 183

The Chain Grace Schulman 190

The Postcard and the Puzzle: For Agha Shahid Ali Ada Limón 194

The Chat of the Only World: Agha Shahid Ali in Brooklyn Amitav Ghosh 199

An Introduction to The Beloved Witness Project and a Selected Bibliography of Agha Shahid Ali's Publications in India and America, 1972-2001 Patricia O'Neill Reid Larson 215

Contributors 227