Agha Shahid Ali (1946-2001) was born in New Delhi and grew up in Kashmir before becoming a United States citizen. The themes of exile, nostalgia for lost or ruined landscapes, and political conflict inform many of his poems. He was a superb practitioner of the ghazal, a medieval Persian lyric form of couplets loosely linked by rhymes or repeated words. His fourth collection, Rooms Are Never Finished, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2001. Call Me Ishmael Tonight, a posthumous collection, appeared in 2003.