Agha Shahid Ali

A Nostalgist's Map of America

With his prologue poem "Eurydice," Agha Shahid Ali's Nostalgist introduces the motifs of journey and exile, myth and politics, history and loss, that animate this collection. Mapping America as he travels west-ward, the Nostalgist is an exile from his native Kashmir, and even from his first American home; his is the unique perspective of the outsider. These jeweled, intricate poems, like th emultilayered "In Search of Evanescence," locate and reflect the America that must be "unseen to be believed."

Somewhere between cartographer and stargazer, the Nostalgist links images of water, desert, and myth, returning to Tucson in the monsoons, or seeing Chile in his rearview mirror, all the while creating an intense and vital vision.

"There are Mogul palace ceilings whose countless mirrored convexities at once reduce, multiply, scatter and enchant the figures under their spell. If I may speak for 'America,' it is a privilege to be held in so mercurial, many-faceted a gaze as this poet's, who goes to the heart of my troubles and turns them into bitter honey."—James Merrill