The Lightning Should Have Fallen on Ghalib - Tapa blanda

"An invigorating bouquet of ghazals, witty and astonishing and deliciously difficult,from a poet who deserves to be better known in the West--and is bound tobe, after this book. " -- Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress Of Spices "How fine it is to see a new collection of Ghalib brought into English. His ghazalsoffer spiritual and emotional wisdom, scope, self-knowledge, beauty, and a way of leapingfrom statement to statement whose influence on American poetry is already apparent.This is a splendid and needed collection of work by a poet of major significance." -- Jane Hirshfield, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry "What if we demolish the ego, dig under the ruins, as Rumi tells us to, andinstead of finding the divine Friend, we find just the ground we're standing on? Ghalib and Robert Bly face this stark possibility with their fine, blended gaze." -- Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi --Pavan K. Aug 6, 2012

Amazing work , the English translation fails to catch the complete essence of the words but that's fine'cause its practically impossible to get 100%from a translation , overall great work --Gaurav Joshi Dec 5, 2014

This is indeed the best translation of Ghalib available in English language. I have read versions in English by Aijaz Ahmad, Kanda, Sasha Newborn and several others and there is simply no comparison. Bly and Dutta's work is far-far superior to what is available in the market. Since Urdu is my mother tongue and I have read Ghalib's original work, I can evaluate this book at a different level than others who can not read Ghalib's original poetry in Urdu. I am quite a bit surprised at other reviewers who have given this book one star and at their vituperation. Sounds as if they were reading some political book and became upset at something!!! I am really surprised that the reviewer from Irvine believes that the verses stray from their literal meanings and the interpretations are incorrect. I would love to hear from him and find out how he arrived at this absolutely insane conclusion. I have read Ghalib so many times in Urdu and Bly's versions, in my opinion, are much closer to the Urdu originals than other books. Of course, Urdu being the language it is and Ghalib being the best poet in Urdu, tons of meanings emerge from the original Urdu couplets. English is simply not capable of expressing the subtleties that exist in such a refined language as Urdu. The reviewer from Sunnyvale sounds like an illiterate buffoon, I wonder if he was reading the same book that I was! His bizarre definition of Ghazal "Ghazal is said to be a cry of a gazelle who is being cornered by a hunter and knows it is going to die" also exposes his lack of understanding of what this poetic form is. Anyway, translations are done for the benefit of people who don't know the original language. Given this fact, people who know the original Urdu would never be satisfied with the translations. I am in the same boat. I don't think that anyone can capture the feelings, color, and beauty of Ghalib's poetry in a translation. Still, Bly and Dutta's work outshines any other effort and The Lightning Should Have Fallen on Ghalib is an outstanding introduction to Mirza Ghalib. --By Rajinder Sethi 22 February 2003

The Lightning Should Have Fallen on Ghalib contains selected poems of Ghalib, translated from Urdu by Robert Bly and Sunil Dutta.Ghalib was a celebrated Urdu and Persian poet. He spent much of his life in Delhi, and bore witness to the British conquest of the city in the year 1857. Ghalib followed the tradition of Hafez and Rumi, but his poetry is unique in a way that they depict his spiritual struggles and the unadorned honesty, with which he writes and speaks to a universal audience. This book has a collection of thirty ghazals, signifying Ghalib s mastery of a graceful poetic form admired for centuries.