19 pages • 38 minutes read
Agha Shahid AliPostcard from Kashmir
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1991A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
The poem consists of 14 lines, reminiscent of the sonnet form, and is arranged in four stanzas, the first two of which are couplets. The last two stanzas are of unequal lengths (six and four lines, respectively), giving the poem’s structure a contemporary twist. The poem does not follow regular rhyme or meter, though aural devices like alliteration, repetition, and half-rhymes provide it an interior rhythm. The opening stanzaic couplets are in the manner of the ghazal, a Persian and Urdu poetic form that consists entirely of couplets. The poem’s nod to the sonnet and the ghazal, while maintaining its own unique, contemporary form shows the poet’s homage to all his varied literary influences.
Repetition occurs with the words “home” (Lines 2, 5, 6) and “so” (Lines 7, 8, 9, 10). Assonance—that is, the repetition of vowel sounds—occurs with the repeated plaintive “o” sound (“home,” “closest,” “so”; Lines 5, 6, 7), which emphasizes the poem’s tone of yearning and nostalgia. Examples of alliteration—where the initial consonant sound is repeated—include “Now I hold / the half-inch Himalayas in my hand. (Lines 3-4). The emphasized “h” sound continues with the repeated occurrence of “home,” accentuating the poem’s themes of loss and exile. The poem’s diction is relatively simple and contains primary, powerful words like “home” and “love,” which shows the rawness of the speaker’s emotions. Yet, the rawness is juxtaposed with a restrained tone, as if to echo the sentiment, “I always loved neatness” (Line 3).
Metaphor and Imagery
The poem uses an elaborate system of metaphors to describe the speaker’s relationship with Kashmir. The metaphors are necessary because Kashmir is no longer a lived reality for the speaker, who processes it through the complex lens of their own remembrance, nostalgia, yearning, and turmoil. What they remember is the memory of a memory—something beautiful yet ineffable. The central metaphor of a picture postcard defines the relationship between exile and homeland: The homeland is now a postcard, something shrunk and two-dimensional. Next, the speaker compares their memory of Kashmir to an out-of-focus, partly undeveloped photograph. This indicates that the memory of Kashmir is fading and growing imperfect because of distance created by space, time, and nostalgia itself. Other metaphors are the mailbox, which conveys the bracketed, constricted reality and idea of Kashmir, and the Jhelum as a symbol for a lost paradise.
Irony, Contrast, and Juxtaposition
To convey the magnitude of the speaker’s sense of loss, the poem frequently juxtaposes reality and expectation, past and present. The four by six inches of the postcard and the confines of the mailbox are juxtaposed against the warm, expansive space of home. The juxtaposition highlights the irony that the speaker’s home is now a flat, small postcard. Similarly, the image of the half-inch Himalayas is set in contrast against the grandeur of the actual mountains. Contrast in the poem works on multiple levels and sometimes creates ambiguity; when the speaker says the waters of the Jhelum will never be as ultramarine as the Jhelum of the postcard, they seem to be suggesting that the postcard reality is preferable to the actual Kashmir. They may thus be making an ironic comment on the nature of an immigrant’s nostalgia, which sometimes carries the fixed, static memory of their homeland, denying its complex, evolving reality. The ambiguity created by the juxtaposition and contrast highlight the fact that the speaker’s feelings for Kashmir are multilayered.
Irony also occurs in Lines 1-3: “Kashmir shrinks into my mailbox, / my home a neat four by six inches. / I always loved neatness.” The speaker makes a self-deprecatory comment on their yearning for tidy truths. Now that the yearning has been answered by the messy reality of Kashmir turning into a picture postcard, the speaker suggests their desire was false; the truth is rarely tidy or neat. Attempting to structure it on a template paradoxically results in a fake, doctored reality.
