An Opening for a Conversation

In February of 1997, I exchanged letters with the poet and scholar Agha Shahid Ali. He was my teacher and “supervisor,” at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and, because the internet was infant, we still did business by postal mail. I had just published some poems in a few literary journals and was feeling good about myself; pretty much every journal to which I had submitted poems had accepted at least one. I sent some of the poems that had been accepted but not yet published to Shahid for his feedback. In truth, though, as I look back I realize that I sent the poems not only for feedback—I did want to know if there was anything I should tweak when I got the proofs back from the journals—but also because I wanted his praise. As poets, I think we need to hear someone say that what we’ve written is beautiful; despite the encouragement from the journals, I still wanted that validation from Shahid. Shahid had very few line edits, but he wrote this one sentence that’s lived within me ever since: “Well, these poems are fine if this is all you want them to be.” Initially, I thought Dayaaamn, but then I collected myself and let that bit of wisdom sink in. In one sentence, he taught me everything I needed to know about writing a poem. He was pushing me to think about the poem beyond how well constructed it was. You see, there are times when we need to pull the poem away from our faces to get a wider view of what it’s trying to say to the world. This may sound lofty, but it’s real. A poem isn’t simply line breaks and rhythmic language; it needs to contribute to our lives. 

I understood this more clearly when Shahid taught me the ghazal. To be clear, Shahid taught all poets writing in English how to write a ghazal. If you need evidence, please read the intro to his ghazal anthology, Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English (Wesleyan Poetry Series, 2000). It’s here that he explains “the unity of disunity” in the ghazal form, and how the tight theme of the poem and the radif, the monorhyme that closes each couplet, allows for nimbleness within each autonomous stanza. As he explains, a good ghazal knows its aim and can approach each couplet from a new direction, a new angle, without enjambment across them, and still hold together as an experience.

Shahid was one of the first people in whom I immediately recognized genius. He had a wicked sense of humor; he was incredibly erudite; he was both kind and generous; he was a good dancer; he was casually self-assured without coming off as arrogant—no small feat for men, particularly poets. Above all, he wrote heartbreakingly beautiful poems. It may sound like I idolized him to some degree. And I did.

While I was working with Shahid that semester, his mother died. At Warren Wilson, students and their supervisors would have six exchanges by mail. It was during our last exchange that Shahid lost his mother. He had to fly to Kashmir, India, to deal with funeral arrangements, and I assumed that I wouldn’t hear from him for the rest of the semester. But he mailed my packet back to me, overnight, Global Federal Express. His letter was short, and, while expressing his grief, he explained to me what I might try to do with my poems to make them better. 

Whenever I face a stack of poems or papers to return to students, I think of Shahid and I shake off my fatigue or even disinterest, and find something to say. Shahid’s remarks on my poems were slight adjustments, mostly clearing language out of the way so the reader could actually see what I was trying to make sing. It wasn’t really about the line or the structure as much as it was about the conversation I was trying to have with the world. In his letters to me, Shahid would challenge me to articulate what I meant to say in the poem. He would ask why I had written a particular poem and, in doing so, he opened a door in my mind. This is the question that needs to be asked in the writing process, when we’re alone with a blank page, searching in the dark for language. We must interrogate ourselves when a workshop isn’t available. It’s really the only way to have a life as a writer because no writer can build a body of work waiting for a workshop. Sometimes it’s just about asking oneself: is this poem all that I want it to be? Line breaks and experiments with form … none of it can answer that question. With social media, podcasts, and other mediums grabbing our attention, why does the world need a poem by … let’s say, to be polite, me? Why do I want to write another poem?

Well, I usually want to start a conversation that needs to happen. Too often, we want to have the right answer or to be able to demonstrate some form of expertise before we commit to writing. I was reluctant to write this blog post, considering how many poets are out there espousing their own ideas about mastery of the craft. I don’t want to add my voice to the mix. I don’t wait to have an answer to some question to start writing; I write when I have questions that I want others to ponder, questions I’m ruminating on myself. With so much chatter in the world, pondering is a luxury. Our mission as poets is knowing what questions to raise. Shahid was right: simply getting a poem published isn’t enough.