Agaha Shahid Ali’s The Country Without a Post Office stems from the 1990s Kashmir uprising against India, which led to violence and political turmoil in the region for a long time, and closed its post offices for seven months. Ali creates a loose narrative harmonizing with the central themes through repeating images and phrases, and constantly revisiting the flora and fauna of Kashmir. Divided into five sections, each with a small number of poems followed by a few notes, the poems present a retrospective glace at the history of Kashmir. He traces different time frames and the tyrannies of the foreign invaders¬–the Mughals, the Afghans, the Sikhs, and the Dogras, who destroyed the dreams of Kashmir’s nationhood. Intertexting the tragedy of Haba
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Ali’s poetry displays his mastery over multiple linguistic and cultural backgrounds. His rich Urdu language heritage, his education in Delhi and United States of America reflect in his poems. Ali argues that the position of an Indian writer in English is a privileged one. He says, “I “own” three major world cultures, (Hindu, Muslim and western) without any effort. I have a natural and profound inwardness with them; my use of them is not exotic. I feel them in three languages” (“A Darkly Defense of Dead White Males” 149). Bruce King remarks,
Marxist tell him he must learn to write in Hindi, Urdu, or Bengali of he is to be an Indian poet A product of three cultures (Western, Hindu and Muslim) and a “foreign” language, he realizes that he is only paying lips service of Revolution. Instead he continues to study English literature and ironically observes that “Shakespeare feeds my alienation.” Although Ali’s politics are of the Left, he like many writers, is aware of the absurd incongruities between actuality and political simplification. (King …show more content…
The technical precision and exceptionality of a villanelle is exemplified in a poem, entitled “A Villanelle”, a poem of nineteen lines, three-line five stanzas and last four lines with just two rhyming patterns: what else besides God disappears at the
Ali’s poetry displays his mastery over multiple linguistic and cultural backgrounds. His rich Urdu language heritage, his education in Delhi and United States of America reflect in his poems. Ali argues that the position of an Indian writer in English is a privileged one. He says, “I “own” three major world cultures, (Hindu, Muslim and western) without any effort. I have a natural and profound inwardness with them; my use of them is not exotic. I feel them in three languages” (“A Darkly Defense of Dead White Males” 149). Bruce King remarks,
Marxist tell him he must learn to write in Hindi, Urdu, or Bengali of he is to be an Indian poet A product of three cultures (Western, Hindu and Muslim) and a “foreign” language, he realizes that he is only paying lips service of Revolution. Instead he continues to study English literature and ironically observes that “Shakespeare feeds my alienation.” Although Ali’s politics are of the Left, he like many writers, is aware of the absurd incongruities between actuality and political simplification. (King …show more content…
The technical precision and exceptionality of a villanelle is exemplified in a poem, entitled “A Villanelle”, a poem of nineteen lines, three-line five stanzas and last four lines with just two rhyming patterns: what else besides God disappears at the