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Rooms Are Never Finished: Poems
"An incomparable work, an unmatched achievement."―Anthony Hecht 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.
108 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2001
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About the author
Agha Shahid Ali
24 books213 followersAgha Shahid Ali (आगा शाहीद अली) was an American poet of Kashmiri ancestry and upbringing.
His poetry collections include A Walk Through the Yellow Pages, The Half-Inch Himalayas, A Nostalgist's Map of America, The Country Without a Post Office, Rooms Are Never Finished (finalist for the National Book Award, 2001). His last book was Call Me Ishmael Tonight, a collection of English ghazals. His poems are featured in American Alphabets: 25 Contemporary Poets (2006) and many other anthologies.
Ali was also a translator of Faiz Ahmed Faiz (The Rebel's Silhouette; Selected Poems) and editor (Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English). He was widely credited for helping to popularize the ghazal form in America.
Ali taught at the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as well as creative writing programs at University of Utah, Warren Wilson College and New York University. He died peacefully, in his sleep, of brain cancer in December, 2001. He was laid to rest in Northampton, Massachusetts.
His poetry collections include A Walk Through the Yellow Pages, The Half-Inch Himalayas, A Nostalgist's Map of America, The Country Without a Post Office, Rooms Are Never Finished (finalist for the National Book Award, 2001). His last book was Call Me Ishmael Tonight, a collection of English ghazals. His poems are featured in American Alphabets: 25 Contemporary Poets (2006) and many other anthologies.
Ali was also a translator of Faiz Ahmed Faiz (The Rebel's Silhouette; Selected Poems) and editor (Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English). He was widely credited for helping to popularize the ghazal form in America.
Ali taught at the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as well as creative writing programs at University of Utah, Warren Wilson College and New York University. He died peacefully, in his sleep, of brain cancer in December, 2001. He was laid to rest in Northampton, Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
December 11, 2020
My heart alone is heavy,
so let it remain here, around your house, barking, howling for a golden time.
It alone is my homeland. In the exodus I love you more, I empty my soul of words: I love you more.
We depart.
Butterflies lead our shadows.
In exodus we remember the lost buttons of our shirts, we forget the crown of our days, we remember the apricot’s sweat, we forget the dance of horses on festival nights.
In departure we become only the birds’ equals, merciful to our days, grateful for the least.
I am content to have the golden dagger that makes my murdered heart dance—
so let it remain here, around your house, barking, howling for a golden time.
It alone is my homeland. In the exodus I love you more, I empty my soul of words: I love you more.
We depart.
Butterflies lead our shadows.
In exodus we remember the lost buttons of our shirts, we forget the crown of our days, we remember the apricot’s sweat, we forget the dance of horses on festival nights.
In departure we become only the birds’ equals, merciful to our days, grateful for the least.
I am content to have the golden dagger that makes my murdered heart dance—
December 20, 2008
Agha Shahid Ali was a Kashmiri-American poet who I don't think is very well known in the US. Years ago, I happened to hear one of his poems on the radio while I was driving and was completely blown away. Finally, I found a used copy of his poems. The "theme" of this book is his mother's death due to an illness, and him taking her body back to Kashmir per her wishes. As with any compilation, I was moved by the some poems, and not so much by the others. I especially liked his ghazals (a type of poetry with roots in pre-Islamic Arabia and popularized by Sufi mystics like Rumi). Here is how one of favorite poems from the book starts:
What will suffice for a true-love knot? Even the rain?
But he has bought grief's lottery, bought even the rain.
"our glosses / wanting in this world" "Can you remember?"
Anyone! "when we thought / the poets taught" even the rain?
After we died--That was it!--God left us in the dark.
And as we forgot the dark, we forgot even the rain.
Drought was over. Where was I? Drinks were on the house.
For mixers, my love, you'd poured--what?--even the rain.
Most of the poems have a sense of nostalgia, melancholy, and/or longing to them. This is fairly typical of the ghazal style so they don't always make for a "fun" read...but still worth it I think.
What will suffice for a true-love knot? Even the rain?
But he has bought grief's lottery, bought even the rain.
"our glosses / wanting in this world" "Can you remember?"
Anyone! "when we thought / the poets taught" even the rain?
After we died--That was it!--God left us in the dark.
And as we forgot the dark, we forgot even the rain.
Drought was over. Where was I? Drinks were on the house.
For mixers, my love, you'd poured--what?--even the rain.
Most of the poems have a sense of nostalgia, melancholy, and/or longing to them. This is fairly typical of the ghazal style so they don't always make for a "fun" read...but still worth it I think.
Read
September 10, 2025'I Dream I Am at the Ghat of the Only World', 'Violins', and 'By the Waters of the Sind' were my favourites.
February 19, 2024
Beautiful collection of poems. I'm not very familiar with the history of Kashmir, so I'm excited to dive into this work more in class this week.
February 7, 2017
Beautiful collection if you can get past the tears that the first few poems evokes. The underlying theme of the poems is grief and loss - at the death of his mother, at the inevitable change in his life and the loss of his home. And yet, there is so much more emotion contained here.
This book is my introduction to the late poet and I would like to read some of his earlier works.
This book is my introduction to the late poet and I would like to read some of his earlier works.
October 28, 2008
Absolutely stunning. The first poem in the volume, "Lenox Hill" made me weep at Barnes & Noble the first time I read it. Some of Shahid's best ghazals also included.
October 6, 2025
Ali's collection might seem slim, and the number of words/lines/stanzas on each page might create the impression that this is a quick read. The impression is fallacious.
He draws on, adapts, plunders, and repeats multiple sources to craft his lines, which not only demand complete attention but also multiple readings to get even a sliver of what he seems to communicate.
The book's description as merely detailing Ali's grief over the death of his mother, the transportation of her body to Kashmir, and the devastation of Kashmir itself (and Palestine, though not mentioned in the blurb), while not wrong, is far from an accurate picture of what the poet is painting and working with.
Nonetheless, the difficult read is rewarding, and even on my first reading, while many references and lines still escape me, the few stanzas and poems I somewhat understood clicked with me intellectually and emotionally.
If there is a critique to be made, only an extremely subjective one is possible (one that will submerge into nothingness given the multiple deserved 5-star reviews on Goodreads). I wish the mother, whose death is tied to and explored through the devastation of various homelands and scriptural material, were granted a bit more complexity outside of being an idealised "universe" (only hinted at when Shahid [the narrator] mentions arguing with her in the last poem). Perhaps that is the point, one that highlights the limitations of the forms Ali works with, or perhaps it highlights the need for me to return to this collection multiple times.
He draws on, adapts, plunders, and repeats multiple sources to craft his lines, which not only demand complete attention but also multiple readings to get even a sliver of what he seems to communicate.
The book's description as merely detailing Ali's grief over the death of his mother, the transportation of her body to Kashmir, and the devastation of Kashmir itself (and Palestine, though not mentioned in the blurb), while not wrong, is far from an accurate picture of what the poet is painting and working with.
Nonetheless, the difficult read is rewarding, and even on my first reading, while many references and lines still escape me, the few stanzas and poems I somewhat understood clicked with me intellectually and emotionally.
If there is a critique to be made, only an extremely subjective one is possible (one that will submerge into nothingness given the multiple deserved 5-star reviews on Goodreads). I wish the mother, whose death is tied to and explored through the devastation of various homelands and scriptural material, were granted a bit more complexity outside of being an idealised "universe" (only hinted at when Shahid [the narrator] mentions arguing with her in the last poem). Perhaps that is the point, one that highlights the limitations of the forms Ali works with, or perhaps it highlights the need for me to return to this collection multiple times.
March 15, 2022
Stunning, heartbreaking, luminous, stunning.
This was my first collection by Ali, and I was absolutely captivated. A master of the ghazal and a poet for exiles, Ali asks you to gently see your world newly, to see grief and love and war and creation and being in lamplight and birdsong. I will return to these over and over again. I am already returning.
"that How dare the moon—I want to cry out,
Mother—shine so hauntingly out
here when I've sentenced it to black waves
inside me? Why has it not perished?
How dare it shine on an earth
from which you have vanished?"
-By the Waters of the Sind
This was my first collection by Ali, and I was absolutely captivated. A master of the ghazal and a poet for exiles, Ali asks you to gently see your world newly, to see grief and love and war and creation and being in lamplight and birdsong. I will return to these over and over again. I am already returning.
"that How dare the moon—I want to cry out,
Mother—shine so hauntingly out
here when I've sentenced it to black waves
inside me? Why has it not perished?
How dare it shine on an earth
from which you have vanished?"
-By the Waters of the Sind
July 31, 2020
I loved the ghazals and Secular Comedy. I always find this style of poetry difficult but I feel drawn to Ali because we are both Kashmiri. His grief for his mother was so palpable especially in the beginning poems. Grief is written thickly, splattered across the pages, as well as a refreshingly intimate parlay with God (including moments of chastisement). The two poems about suicide m were painfully reductive to me. The motif of the slavery as well.
August 20, 2018
How was this a Finalist and not a winner? I'll never understand. A masterpiece by Agha Shahid Ali. It speaks of death and emptiness better than you'd imagine and once you read , you'll think, how did Agha imagine that? Couldn't put down, even once. 5/5.
February 17, 2025
- She is farther than any god today
and nearer than any god.
And God?
He’s farther, farther from us, forever far.
We lift the shrine.
The women break into
There is no god but.
- Memory’s dim places.
Let me weep, let this blood
flow from my eyes.
and nearer than any god.
And God?
He’s farther, farther from us, forever far.
We lift the shrine.
The women break into
There is no god but.
- Memory’s dim places.
Let me weep, let this blood
flow from my eyes.
February 21, 2017
I dont understand the hype about this book, nothing special, there is some lyricism, but it is normal prose.
August 22, 2018
These are heavy but so, so good. I'm going to be thinking about these poems for a long time.
August 30, 2023
~3.75
November 16, 2024
Maybe rooms don't get finished, but so glad that this collection was so it could be published.
February 16, 2022
“Will I be / the one to close the last door of the sky, I, the last gasp of an / Arab?”
“Will I wait here, alone, by this ebony abyss, / abandoned by you, alone?”
Such a beautiful tribute to his mother, and such a special perspective on religion, exile, and loss.
“Will I wait here, alone, by this ebony abyss, / abandoned by you, alone?”
Such a beautiful tribute to his mother, and such a special perspective on religion, exile, and loss.
April 11, 2015
This was fabulous. I loved the way Agha's writing flows; every poem is a little masterpiece. "A Secular Comedy" was especially wonderful, as was "Summers of Translation," the third section of "From Amherst to Kashmir".
Every poem was brilliantly crafted; this is a bit from the title poem: "But for small invisible hands, no wall/ would be lacquered a rain forest's colors. Before,/ these walls had just mirrors (I tried on--for size--/kismet's barest air)". The poems were elegant, meaningful, packed with rich imagery, the heartbreak of loss, and the power death exerts on a family.
As a side note, I have completely fallen in love with the form of the ghazal. My favorite fixed poetic form is the sestina, but this one is tied with the pantoum as the second place form in my heart for its sheer beauty. Agha really understands the form and realizes it perfectly.
Every poem was brilliantly crafted; this is a bit from the title poem: "But for small invisible hands, no wall/ would be lacquered a rain forest's colors. Before,/ these walls had just mirrors (I tried on--for size--/kismet's barest air)". The poems were elegant, meaningful, packed with rich imagery, the heartbreak of loss, and the power death exerts on a family.
As a side note, I have completely fallen in love with the form of the ghazal. My favorite fixed poetic form is the sestina, but this one is tied with the pantoum as the second place form in my heart for its sheer beauty. Agha really understands the form and realizes it perfectly.
September 13, 2007
About being somewhere, but not really being there. Almost all the poems are about mourning, so they're better read on a rainy day or late in the day.
July 26, 2014
In the mystical poetic tradition of the masters of Sufi verse.
August 30, 2015
A beautiful collection of poetry in grief, faith, and hope.
August 14, 2007
Not a big fan of the ghazal.
Read
June 17, 2017Excellent composition and interplay of His mothers death, karbala and violence in kashmir
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews