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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

Poetry Off the Shelf: Let Your Mirrored Complexities Multiply

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Curtis Fox: This is Poetry Off the Shelf from the Poetry Foundation, March 9th, 2010. I'm Curtis Fox. This week, the man who brought the ghazal to America. The reputation of the Kashmiri American poet Agha Shahid Ali has only grown since his early death in 2001. His work has been highly praised by luminaries like W.S. Merwin, Hayden Carruth, and John Ashbery. He is also a very important touchstone for younger Muslim American poets like Kazim Ali, for instance, who joins me by phone from Oberlin College in Ohio, where he teaches. Hi, Kazim.

Kazim Ali: Hi. How are you?

Curtis Fox: Good. So, we're going to listen to one Shahid Ali poem together. But first, could you tell us a little bit about him?

Kazim Ali: He grew up in Kashmir, although he spent a small portion of his childhood in America, but he wrote exclusively in English. And you can sort of hear the sound, the musical rhythm, the cadence, even, of his free verse poetry. He was really working on kind of creating a little bit of a hybrid language. And then in his last four books, he really started to work much more in poetic forms.

Curtis Fox: This is quite opposite than the trajectory of most poets who start with very formal poetry, and then they loosen things up and go into free verse. He did just the opposite.

Kazim Ali: Exactly the opposite. And his forms got more and more complex and more and more constrained if you will.

Curtis Fox: Now, the poem we're going to hear is a ghazal, which is a Persian form from the 11th century. What is a ghazal?

Kazim Ali: Well, a ghazal is a poem that is made up of any number of couplets, usually between five and 12 couplets. But each couplet itself has its own subject, and oftentimes there is a varying emotional tone or quality between the couplets. Some of them might be witty, some of them might be funny, some of them might be dramatic, some of them might be poignant. And it sort of changes up. The unity of the ghazal is the formal unity.

Curtis Fox: Right, the rhyme schemes and the repetitions.

Kazim Ali: And the repetition, yes.

Curtis Fox: We're going to listen to the poem, but I want to do something I've almost never done on this program, which is to interrupt the poem and then ask you a few questions about it. And then when we're done with that, we'll play the whole thing in its entirety. And I think we're justified in doing that. Because you said that the couplets are sort of semi-autonomous, aren't they?

Kazim Ali: Yes, they are.

Curtis Fox: OK, let's hear the poem and I'll be back very shortly to interrupt it.

Speaker:
Tonight by Agha Shahid Ali.

Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight?
Whom else from rapture’s road will you expel tonight?

Curtis Fox: So, it's not quite clear who you is here. It could be a woman. It could be God.

Kazim Ali: Yeah, and it could change from couplet to couplet. There is this expulsion from paradise, I guess you might say. The paradise of the lover. This kind of relationship between God and the individual believer, you know, that's going to come back later on in the poem, too.

Speaker:
Those “Fabrics of Cashmere—” “to make Me beautiful—”
“Trinket”—to gem—“Me to adorn—How tell”—tonight?

Curtis Fox: Those are quotes from an Emily Dickinson poem.

Kazim Ali: Yeah, it is. It's a Dickinson poem that goes something like, “How tell trinket to make me beautiful fabrics of cashmere.” And she goes on and on and on. So, he sort of cut up that Dickinson poem and reorganized it.

Speaker:
I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates—
A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.
God’s vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar—
All the archangels—their wings frozen—fell tonight.

Curtis Fox: That's a wonderful image of a kind of spiritual loneliness gone sour. God's vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar. What's happening there?

Kazim Ali: Well, you know, God expelled Lucifer. He expelled Adam and Eve from the garden. And, so, there's sort of this idea, I think, of God's loneliness. But here the loneliness has turned to vinegar, and all the archangels are falling out of heaven.

Speaker:
Lord, cried out the idols, Don’t let us be broken;
Only we can convert the infidel tonight.

Curtis Fox: Now the language is switching from Christian to Muslim there. What's happening, there?

Kazim Ali: Direct references, I believe, is the story from Prophet Muhammad. When he went into the house of God, the Kaaba, or the Black Square mosque in Mecca, which was filled with idols, and he smashed them all. So, you actually have the idols themselves then praying to God. And, so, it sort of reflects this idea of the fallen angel is the one who understands. Those that are expelled from the garden, really understand what they've lost better than anybody who is, you know, still within the kingdom, so to speak.

Speaker:
Mughal ceilings, let your mirrored convexities
multiply me at once under your spell tonight.
He’s freed some fire from ice in pity for Heaven.
He’s left open—for God—the doors of Hell tonight.

Curtis Fox: Now, who is the he there?

Kazim Ali: You know, this is what we talked about. The you in the poem, the I and the poem, the he and the poem, they switch. The he may be a lover. That he may be the fallen angel. The he may be the refugee from belief, from the earlier couplet. And it is maybe all of these things. That couplet about the mogul ceilings, I think this is like an ars poetica for the ghazal.

Speaker:
Mughal ceilings, let your mirrored convexities
multiply me at once under your spell tonight.

Kazim Ali: So not only is there a multiplicity of awarenesses throughout the ghazal, but there is also the concept of being under a spell. You know, being kind of captivated by this swirl of emotion.

Speaker:
In the heart’s veined temple, all statues have been smashed.
No priest in saffron’s left to toll its knell tonight.

Curtis Fox: So now we're back to the destruction of the idols again right?

Kazim Ali: Although you have a priest in Saffron, which is the color of a Hindu priest. Kind of like a cross-cultural thing.

Speaker:
God, limit these punishments, there’s still Judgment Day—
I’m a mere sinner, I’m no infidel tonight.

Kazim Ali: I love the idea that he's saying he's a sinner, but he's not an unbeliever. He's saying judgment day is yet to come. You know, let's do the punishment there.

Curtis Fox: And then the poem makes a wild leap here.

Speaker:
Executioners near the woman at the window.
Damn you, Elijah, I’ll bless Jezebel tonight.

Kazim Ali: And now we're in the Bible again with the story of Jezebel. And she is the pagan queen, if you remember. And Elijah is a prophet who denounces her. So, in the story, in the reference of the story, Jezebel is the villainess and Elijah is the hero. But he's saying, damn you, Elijah, I'll bless Jezebel tonight. I choose the pagan side.

Speaker:
The hunt is over, and I hear the Call to Prayer
fade into that of the wounded gazelle tonight.
My rivals for your love—you’ve invited them all?
This is mere insult, this is no farewell tonight.

Curtis Fox: It seems to be getting back into the idea of a romantic love.

Kazim Ali: It is romantic love. And it's important to remember what the couplet about romantic love can metaphorically be about someone singing to the divine, but someone singing to the divine can also be metaphorically singing to the lover as well.

Curtis Fox: And then the closing couplet.

Speaker:
And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee—
God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.

Curtis Fox: Now what's going on? And that's a very complicated final couplet.

Kazim Ali: Right, well, the reference of “Call Me Ishmael tonight,” obviously, is the reference to Moby-Dick. But it's also Ishmael is from Abraham and Isaac and Ishmael. Ishmael is also the older brother, the forgotten brother, the brother of the cast-out first wife. So, in a sense, Ishmael is also an infidel figure. You know, the excluded brother, the one that left that had to go away to the desert, you know. So, he's still retaining the sort of outsider flavor. Call me Ishmael tonight.

Curtis Fox: So in this poem you have to know a fair bit about both Christianity, a little bit about Hinduism, and quite a bit about Islam.

Kazim Ali: There's deep referentiality in this poem, but I also think it's important to add the music of the poem. It brings you through it.

Curtis Fox: Well, let's hear the music of the poem. Let's hear the poem all the way through uninterrupted this time. Here's “Tonight” by Agha Shahid Ali, read by Michael Stuhlbarg.

Michael Stuhlbarg:
Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight?

Whom else from rapture’s road will you expel tonight?

Those “Fabrics of Cashmere—” “to make Me beautiful—”

“Trinket”—to gem—“Me to adorn—How tell”—tonight?

I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates—

A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.

God’s vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar—

All the archangels—their wings frozen—fell tonight.

Lord, cried out the idols, Don’t let us be broken;

Only we can convert the infidel tonight.

Mughal ceilings, let your mirrored convexities

multiply me at once under your spell tonight.

He’s freed some fire from ice in pity for Heaven.

He’s left open—for God—the doors of Hell tonight.

In the heart’s veined temple, all statues have been smashed.

No priest in saffron’s left to toll its knell tonight.

God, limit these punishments, there’s still Judgment Day—

I’m a mere sinner, I’m no infidel tonight.

Executioners near the woman at the window.

Damn you, Elijah, I’ll bless Jezebel tonight.

The hunt is over, and I hear the Call to Prayer

fade into that of the wounded gazelle tonight.

My rivals for your love—you’ve invited them all?

This is mere insult, this is no farewell tonight.

And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee—

God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.
 

Curtis Fox: Kazim, when I asked Michael Stuhlbarg to record this poem, we were really in the dark about it. We really didn't know what we now know, what I now know from talking with you about this poem. What did you think about the reading?

Kazim Ali: Well, I think that it's a perfect illustration of what I said earlier, which is that the strength and the power of the poem lies not on the intellectual knowledge of the weave of references, but really on the music, on the pure music of the lines.

Curtis Fox: Thanks Kazim.

Kazim Ali: You're welcome. It was really fun. I'm very interested to hear how it all edits together.

Curtis Fox: Me too. Kazim Ali's latest book of poems is Bright Felon, which is published by Wesleyan University Press. He also has a novel out called The Disappearance of Seth, published by Etruscan press. We always like to hear from listeners, so please take a moment and let us know what you think of this program. Email us [email protected]. The theme music for this program comes from the Claudia Quintet. For Poetry Off the Shelf, I'm Curtis Fox. Thanks for listening.