In Call Me Ishmael Tonight the poet offers a new form-the American Ghazal-written as salutation to his eminent poet contemporaries in the USA. In this he also courageously faces the fact of his own mortality. In Rooms are Never Finished the poet follows the trail of his previous collection titled the Country Without a Post Office in order to excavate the devastation wrought upon Kashmir, his childhood home-the place about which he felt most deeply. He links a more personal devastation to the destiny of his homeland: his mother’s death and the journey with her body back to Kashmir. These are poems of amazing inventiveness, infused with passion and grief. This is a collection which reinforces the view that Agha Shahid Ali possessed a voice of the rarest distinction.
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