You remember when I did that thing to you with the dróttkvætt? I’m about to do it again, but gently, and with love.
This month’s poetry slam focuses on love, and before you chide me for being out of season let me remind you that this month is exactly nine months after February, and an awful lot of us seem to have birthdays right around now.
One of the most beautiful expressions of love is a poetry form called the ghazal. Born in seventh century Arabia and popularized by thirteenth- and fourteenth-century poets such as Rumi and Hafiz, the ghazal was finally adopted in the US during the 1960’s. It’s a fairly strict form of poetry in some ways, with its precise structure and refrain, but the process of adapting the form to the English language relaxed it on other ways, like meter.
Let’s dive in and see what it takes to write a ghazal, and then you can try one on this month. If you’re participating in a November writing challenge (either our NoMo challenge or anything else you’ve got going on) this can be a fun new thing on a day you’ve really got a case of writer’s block!
subject matter
Remember what I said about love? Ghazals are all about it. Whether it’s earthly love, love for something greater than oneself, or love of the divine, ghazals center around perfect, unattainable love. This isn’t a case of boy meets girl, it’s a case of boy puts girl on pedestal and then writes agonizingly beautiful poetry about girl instead of just asking if girl would like to get a cup of coffee sometime. In fact, because of the delicate meter and rhyme of the original form, ghazals written in other languages are often sung instead of read aloud.
When you’re writing your ghazal, try to find and evoke the qualities that inspire you in whatever it is you love. Feel free to step into the shoes of a character you’ve written (we can’t accept fan fiction at yeah write, but obviously you could write and publish it somewhere else) and declare your undying devotion to a star, a god, or your immortal beloved.
form
structure
A ghazal is a group of five to fifteen couplets (10-30 lines). Each couplet must be entirely autonomous, but they must all fit together to tell a poem. That is, each couplet is a micro-poem, or a “chapter” in the story told by the entire poem.
meter
There is no requirement for meter when you write a ghazal in English, but each line must be the same length. That is, when you count the syllables, every line must have the same number but there is no requirement that stressed and unstressed syllables form a pattern. Of course, “no requirement for meter” doesn’t mean “meter is forbidden” and you’re free to write the whole thing in iambic pentameter if you want. (Except for you, Christine. Don’t.)
rhyme
This is where the ghazal gets tricky.
The two lines of the first couplet must rhyme. The second line of this couplet contains the refrain, which will be repeated at the end of the second line of every couplet thereafter. The refrain can be as small as one word or as long as three or four, and the last word before the refrain must rhyme with the last word before every other refrain.
I know this is confusing, so let’s analyze an example, and then go on to read the whole ghazal and a few others. It’s not as tricky as it sounds.
The following is an excerpt from the ghazal “Even the Rain” by Agha Shahid Ali, who is credited with introducing the classical form of the ghazal to Americans:
What will suffice for a true-love knot? Even the rain?
But he has bought grief’s lottery, bought even the rain.
“our glosses / wanting in this world” “Can you remember?”
Anyone! “when we thought / the poets taught” even the
rain?
After we died—That was it!—God left us in the dark.
And as we forgot the dark, we forgot even the rain.
Drought was over. Where was I? Drinks were on the house.
For mixers, my love, you’d poured—what?—even the rain.
As you can see, the first two lines of the poem rhyme. (In fact, both contain the refrain. There’s no rule against it.) If you look at just the rhyme, you see
knot? Even the rain?
bought even the rain.
Looking at the rest of the poem, we see that every couplet ends with a variation on this rhyme-refrain pairing: a word ending in the sound “-ot” and “even the rain.”
taught” even the rain?
forgot even the rain.
what?—even the rain.
As you can see, the first line of each couplet (except the first) doesn’t have to rhyme with anything. It just has to have the right number of syllables.
one last thing
No, literally, it’s the last thing. The last couplet of a traditional ghazal invokes the poet’s self, either by including their name or a kenning of their name, its meaning or a reference thereto. Keep your eyes open for this as we dive into our examples.
Ghazal
Agha Shahid Ali
I’ll do what I must if I’m bold in real time.
A refugee, I’ll be paroled in real time.
Cool evidence clawed off like shirts of hell-fire?
A former existence untold in real time …
The one you would choose: Were you led then by him?
What longing, O Yaar, is controlled in real time?
Each syllable sucked under waves of our earth—
The funeral love comes to hold in real time!
They left him alive so that he could be lonely—
The god of small things is not consoled in real time.
Please afterwards empty my pockets of keys—
It’s hell in the city of gold in real time.
God’s angels again are—for Satan!—forlorn.
Salvation was bought but sin sold in real time.
And who is the terrorist, who the victim?
We’ll know if the country is polled in real time.
“Behind a door marked DANGER” are being unwound
the prayers my friend had enscrolled in real time.
The throat of the rearview and sliding down it
the Street of Farewell’s now unrolled in real time.
I heard the incessant dissolving of silk—
I felt my heart growing so old in real time.
Her heart must be ash where her body lies burned.
What hope lets your hands rake the cold in real time?
Now Friend, the Belovèd has stolen your words—
Read slowly: The plot will unfold in real time.
(for Daniel Hall)
Hip-Hop Ghazal
Patricia Smith
Gotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips,
decked out in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips.
As the jukebox teases, watch my sistas throat the heartbreak,
inhaling bassline, cracking backbone and singing thru hips.
Like something boneless, we glide silent, seeping ‘tween floorboards,
wrapping around the hims, and ooh wee, clinging like glue hips.
Engines grinding, rotating, smokin’, gotta pull back some.
Natural minds are lost at the mere sight of ringing true hips.
Gotta love us girls, just struttin’ down Manhattan streets
killing the menfolk with a dose of that stinging view. Hips.
Crying ’bout getting old—Patricia, you need to get up off
what God gave you. Say a prayer and start slinging. Cue hips.
Excited? Me too. Let’s dive into that sea of love. (I couldn’t resist. Sorry. I just made myself a little ill there, if it helps.)
