Shahid was an instructor for the Fine Arts Work Center's Summer Program and was well-loved by staff and students. He will be missed. In memory, we would like to offer a poem of Shahid's from his book, The Half-Inch Himalayas.

Stationery
 
 
The moon did not become the sun.
It just fell on the desert
in great sheets, reams
of silver handmade by you.
The night is your cottage industry now,
the day is your brisk emporium.
The world is full of paper.
 
Write to me.

Agha Shahid Ali was on the MFA & Ph.D. poetry faculty at the University of Utah as well as the poetry faculty of the MFA program at Warren Wilson College. Author of seven collections of poetry, including The Half-Inch Himalayas, A Walk Through the Yellow Pages, A Nostalgist's Map of America,, The Country Without a Post Office (Norton, 1997), and, most recently, Rooms Are Never Finished (W.W. Norton & Co., 2001), which was nominated for the National Book Award. He is also a translator (Faiz Ahmed Faiz, The Rebel's Silhouette: Selected Poems) and critic (T.S. Eliot as Editor). He has edited Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English (Wesleyan, 2000). Among his various awards are Ingram-Merrill and Guggenheim fellowships.

NYU has established an annual reading in Shahid's name. Contributions to the Agha Shahid Ali Reading Fund can be made to NYU Creative Writing Program with a note indicating that they are for the Agha Shahid Ali Reading Fund. For more information, contact:

Melissa Hammerle,Director
NYU Graduate Creative Writing Program
19 University Place, Room 220
New York, NY 10003
 
E-mail: melissa.hammerle@nyu.edu