In this stunningly inventive collection-a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in poetry-Ali excavates the devastation wrought upon his childhood home, Kashmir, and reveals a more personal devastation: his mother's death and the journey with her body back to Kashmir.[...]
Calling on a line or phrase from fellow poets, Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali salutes those known and loved-W. S. Merwin, Mark Strand, James Tate and more-while in other searing verse he courageously faces his own mortality.[...]