EULOGY FOR A POET

Jan. 4, 2002

Most of us never gave Kashmir a second thought until it erupted into the headlines the past few years. I didn't either until, in the mid-1990s, I met poet and Kashmiri exile Agha Shahid Ali. "Call me Shaw-hid," he told me when we met serving on a National Endowment for the Arts literature program panel. So I called him Shaw-hid whenever we met at the Associated Writing Programs' conferences, book fairs, and various other literary events across the U.S. He was a fine poet, teacher, and contributed selflessly to the health and well-being of the literary community.

Shahid's new book of poems, "Rooms Are Never Finished," received a rave review in the New York Times in the Dec. 16 book section. Good reviews were nothing new, it's just a shame that this one came a week after Shahid's death in a year that also brought a National Book Award nomination. Shahid liked to celebrate. When he was a literary fellowship juror three years ago for the Wyoming Arts Council, he was quite happy to toast the successes of the state's new fellows, none of whom he had ever met. He liked a good glass of wine and gourmet meals and new experiences. "Michael," he would ask me in that patrician Indian/Kashmiri accent. "When are you going to bring me to Wyoming?" The third time he asked, I made him an offer. His reply: "What about Montana too? Wyoming and Montana are the only two states I haven't been to." I told him something like: "We'll take one state at a time," and I tried to get him hooked up with Corby Skinner at the YMCA Writer's Voice in Billings. But I don't think he made it to Montana.