Margins
50 Poems book cover
50 Poems
30 Selected 20 New
2010
First Published
2.96
Average Rating
98
Number of Pages
This is a concise and representative volume of Zulfikar Ghose’s poetry for the general reader and for scholars specializing in contemporary English poetry and post-colonial literature. The earliest of the selected poems established Zulfikar Ghose as Pakistan’s premier English language poet. Deracination, an obsessive theme in his early work, resonates as a metaphor for the human condition and gives the poems their universal appeal. The new poems draw upon a wider experience, ranging from an elegy on Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to a meditation on the Botanical Garden in Rio de Janeiro, all heightened by a philosophical underpinning which is a hallmark of Zulfikar Ghose’s work. An impeccable craftsman and creator of striking images, whose themes touch the core of human experience, he is a poet of lasting significance.
Avg Rating
2.96
Number of Ratings
24
5 STARS
29%
4 STARS
17%
3 STARS
4%
2 STARS
21%
1 STARS
29%
goodreads

Author

Zulfikar Ghose
Zulfikar Ghose
Author · 6 books

Zulfikar Ghose (born in Sialkot, India (now Pakistan) on March 13, 1935) is a novelist, poet and essayist. A native of Pakistan who has long lived in Texas, he writes in the surrealist mode of much Latin American fiction, blending fantasy and harsh realism. He became a close friend of British experimental writer B. S. Johnson, with whom he collaborated on several projects, and of Anthony Smith. The three writers met when they served as joint editors of an annual anthology of student poets called Universities' Poetry. Ghose also met English poet Ted Hughes and his wife, the American poet and novelist Sylvia Plath, and American author Janet Burroway, with whom he occasionally collaborated. While teaching and writing in London from 1963–1969, Ghose also free-lanced as a sports journalist, reporting on cricket for The Observer newspaper. Two collections of his poetry were published, The Loss of India (1964) and Jets From Orange (1967), along with an autobiography called Confessions of a Native-Alien (1965) and his first two novels, The Contradictions (1966) and The Murder of Aziz Khan (1969). The Contradictions explores differences between Western and Eastern attitudes and ways of life.

548 Market St PMB 65688, San Francisco California 94104-5401 USA
© 2025 Paratext Inc. All rights reserved