Category Archives: Indian Ocean

Adrienne Rich’s ghazals

February 27, 2014 Her earliest ghazals are in Leaflets, at the very end of the volume, which I must have looked at.   But I’m reading them seriously only now — because of Agha Shahid Ali and Call Me Ishmael Tonight, … Continue reading

Posted in Arabic, Black-Jewish alliances, Caribbean literature, Contemporary novel, Indian Ocean, Middle East, Near Eastern poetry, Poetry, Twentieth century literature | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Cosmopolitan Vernacular

February 6, 2014 Not an oxymoron, but a genetic condition, as Sheldon Pollock argues, a local tongue globalized in its emergence and globalized again in its circulation. Is that why so many African-American authors began with dialect poetry? Not only … Continue reading

Posted in African-American literature, Creole, Dialect, Indian Ocean, Vernacular | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment