News at Eleven: Miraji, the flouter of standard Urdu metres,

has such a firm and mind-boggling grasp of these classical metres that he wrote the longest unilinear poems in the known history of Urdu-Persian poetry--the whole poem being effectively a single line, perfectly metrical, but broken up into numerous lines as quasi-hemistiches (misra'). His monumental poem "Jaatrii" (Pilgrim) is a case in point: the poem has 52 practically equal lines in prosodic terms, one flowing into another, merging in complex manners, but in fact they all constitute a single metrically constructed line. This is no minor feat.

from Dawn: Miraji 1912-1949: Looking for Miraji . . .
then Dawn: Miraji 1912-1949: Sojourns
then Dawn: Miraji 1912-1949: The modern poet
then Dawn: Miraji 1912-1949: Miraji, the critic
then Dawn: Miraji 1912-1949: Salam, Miraji!


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