Postcard from Kashmir

Agha Shahid Ali’s poems draw from many literary traditions, including contemporary American poetry, the sonnet, the Persian Ghazal, and Indian and Urdu poetic forms. Educated in Kashmir, New Delhi, and the United States, Ali brought a unique, syncretic perspective to his work. Ali considered himself fortunate for how he could move seamlessly between literary traditions and cultures. In an interview with poet Stacey Chase, Ali says:

I have these three major cultures [Hindu, Western, Muslim] available to me. They’re part of my mental makeup, my emotional makeup. And I do not have to strive for exotica to use them; they’re just there, they’re part of me […] And I think that is the lucky part (Chase, Stacey. “Agha Shahid Ali: The Lost Interview.” The Café Review, 1990).

In “Postcard from Kashmir,” Ali uses the 14-line structure as well as the theme of piercing, lost love as an homage to the sonnet. Though the poem is thoroughly American in its deployment of specific, personal details in the confessional style, it is also a meditation on love and longing in the manner of a ghazal. The melding of influences is clear in Ali’s

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