Shahid Suhrawardy (1890-1965) was a man for all seasons: poet, translator, art critic, theatrical producer, academic, public servant, diplomat, man about town and bon vivant. This volume brings together for the first time his entire poetic output — two collections of his own poetry and one of his collaborative translations from Chinese. Beginning as a poet in the Edwardian manner, he quickly metamorphosed first a modern poet. He is the first modern poet of the South Asian subcontinent, and indeed one of the first generation of modern poets in the English language. His career spanned three continents and many countries and led him to witness some of the most dramatic — and traumatic — events of the twentieth century: the Russian Revolution, the fall of Paris to the Nazis, the Partition of the subcontinent. Kaiser Haq’s introduction provides the first ever comprehensive biographical and critical account of Suhrawardy’s checkered career and varied achievements.
Long neglected by scholars and critics, Suhrawardy is now being revaluated, and this volume ought to help substantially in bringing him due recognition as a poet. Scholars as well as common readers interested in poetry will be able to follow the evolution of Suhrawardy’s poetic talent, from the precocious juvenilia in a late Romantic mode collected in Faded Leaves through the symboliste exercises and ironic modernism of Essays in Verse to the crisp imagistic renderings of the Chinese poet Lee Hou-Chu. Suhrawardy is distinctive among modern poets for his use of a mock-comic persona that is a cross between Eliot’s Prufrock and an aging hedonist.

Contents:

Faded Leaves > Dedication> [Untitled] / A Summer Evening /  Lines / The Indian Maid’s Lament / An Answer /  Fantasia / Love and Life / [Untitled] / Fatima / Now Or- / Luna / The Orchard / Come / (After the Persians) / Swinburne / UN Cri Du Coeur / Shadows / The Mother of Dreams / Sapho.
Essays in Verse> New Poems> Under the Trees / To My Dog / Tee Asoka Tree / A Million Men Surround Me / When You Arise / Letter for the New Year 1933 / Since You Regret / When You Unloose Your Hair Tonight /  Poems from the China Sea - Lines written for an album- Seas Change to the Colour of Jade- All is Quiet Again /  Foam of the Sea / Moon in the Sky / To Jaya G / I Sat at Your Hearth / Lines Written for an Album / The Earth Unbroken and Savage / To M.A. / Fragment / Letter from O’ni.
Early Poems> Narcisse Malarmeen / Chinoiserie Samasinesque / When Thunderclouds About Me Break / The Lady of Symbols / O Thou Beyond All Speech / You Will Not Miss Me / The Cotswolds / In Russia / My Thoughts Flock to Thee / Hold Out My Heart / Oxford Pasticcio.
An Old Man’s Song> Out of the Wreckage / You Make Some Efforts for My Sake / Like Vultures They Lie in Wait / God Has Dowered You with All Gifts / Out of the Row of Those / You Pass from Flirt to Flirt /  Around Your Innocence / You Move in Stateliness / I Blame You for  the Way / At Tennis.
Poems of Lee Hou-Chu
Part 1 > Yü Fu (The Fisherman) /  Yü Fu (The Fisherman) /  Wang Kian Nan / Yuh Lou Ch’iin / Hsi Ch’ian Ying / HuanCh’iSa / Tze Ye Ko /  Hou T’ing Hua P’o Tze / Jui T’ao Yuant / I Fuh Chu / Tieh Lian Hua / Wang Kiang Nan / Ch’ang Siang Sze / Tao Lian Tze / Sia Sen En / Ying Ti’en Ch’ang / P’u Sah Man / Ch’ai Sang Tze / P’u Sah Man / P’u Sa Man / Ch’ ang Siang Se / Sia Sin En / Wu Ye T’i / Sia Sin En.
Part 2 > Yü Mei Jen / Tao Lian Tze Ling / San T’ai Ling / Sia Sin En / Wu Ye T’i / Ch’ing P’ing Loh / WuYe T’i / Wang Kiang Nan / Wang Kiang Nan / Lang T’ao Sa / Lang T’ao Sa / Huan Ch’isa / Yang Wu Tze / Tze Ye Ko / Yu Mei Jen.