Don't Muzzle the Ghazal

Poetic Seasoning

What is poetic about a hot, humid July morning?

Not much. The dog enjoys it though, poking her head into the flower bed, hoping to surprise the very small rabbit who hides there (sometimes). Since the dog is on a leash, the rabbit is safe — safe and knows it, hopping only a few feet further away from the dog and then sitting motionless.

Is it poetic to arrive at work (after a 15 minute walk) wet with sweat?

I hear my long-ago English teachers, all the way into college, rebuking me for using a vulgar word like "sweat"; I remember showing one a poem in which I used "guts" — she thought "intestines" to be much more poetic.

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I wrote that fragment in mid-July; now it's almost the end of September in a different season, at least at this latitude. Fall has long been my favorite season. Since I grew up on a farm, in ranching country, the seasons and weather have always been important. Rainy weather meant my work was limited to regular chores and emergencies. When school started in the fall, my summer of hoeing crops, making hay, harvesting wheat was over. Always a compulsive reading, I enjoyed gifts of leisure time from the weather and structured study in school. (Well, the structured study not so much.)

As you may know, seasons are essential to traditional Japanese haiku — to the point that there is an accepted vocabulary of "season words" and almanacs listing them with examples. American poet and editor, William Higginson compiled two related books on season words from around the world: Haiku World: an International Poetry Almanac, Kodansha International (1996) and The Seasons: Poetry of the  Natural World, Kodansha International (1996). Each of these volumes has excellent poems and very useful  information.

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It's a warm, clear September morning. I walk our dog along the edge of a small parking lot, with a railroad running along its north edge. The right of way and grassy areas are thick with crown vetch, assorted grasses (Timothy & Johnson mostly), and moss thistle, an invasive plant not native to the Ozarks. I'm charged with the joy of autumn, its resonance in my life. (I fell in love with my wife in autumn, which is the best part of it for me.) What does all this have to do with ghazals? The seasons are not, to my knowledge, a traditional part of the ghazal, but perhaps there are ghazal poets, like me, who write with a continuous awareness of season and weather. If so, and if you have ghazals that use seasons and weather thematically, I'd love to see them. Send them!

A Radif Challenge

First, here's a book recommendation; the challenge is based on an article in it. Reorientations/Arabic and Persian Poetry. Edited by Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych and published by Indiana University Press in 1994. David Jalajel recommended this book to me largely because of the article, "The Rise and Fall of a Persian Refrain," by Franklin D. Lewis. In this article, Lewis traces the rise in popularity of the radif "fire and water" ("atash u ab"). Lewis describes how poets used a radif in a number of poems, showing their skill and wit. Eventually, of course, a specific radif declines in use.

Lewis's article suggested a challenge to me; the challenge is to write a ghazal using a set radif.

I will provide a radif and challenge poets to use it in a Persian-style ghazals of five to twelve shers. Then I will choose several submitted ghazals using the refrain and publish them in the April 2008 Issue of The Ghazal Page.

• Deadline: February 14, 2008
• Radif: clouds and rain
• Format: a Persian ghazal with five to twelve shers
• Limit: no more than three ghazals per poet
• Prize: publication of any accepted poems in The Ghazal Page
• Submission: Use the link below to submit a ghazal if you wish

use this link to submit a ghazal

This challenge will also appear on The Ghazal Page soon and, if you're in my mailing list, your should see it in your email box soon. I hope to see so many good "clouds and rain" ghazals that I can use them in a double issue.

"Musicality in Verse," Part 2

The previous entry on this topic discussed consonants. This entry discusses vowels.

I've posted a new page, "A Game for Your Ears," which applies these ideas. The game is an exercise I wrote for my creative writing classes.

Consonants are formed by altering the flow of breath, stopping it, making it hiss, directing it through the nose, and so on. Consonants are formed in different parts of the mouth (& nose); some are voiced, others not.

Vowels are formed also by altering the flow of breath at specific points in the mouth, using positions of the lower jaw, the lips, and the tongue. Vowels are not stopped or subjected to friction. Vowels are voiced unless one is whispering. Vowels are defined, like consonants, by "minimal pairs": two words which differ only in one sound. The difference defines both vowels as phonemes (meaningful sounds) in that language.

For instance, "pit" and "pat" define the minimal pair, /i, a/. The inconsistencies of English spelling mean one has to actually pronounce the words to hear the vowel. The phonemic alphabet for transcribing English is fairly straightforward for consonants, needing only a few non-alphabet symbols; transcribing vowels requires more special symbols. For those interested in more specific information, antimoon.com presents English phonemes with corresponding symbols.

Disclaimer: One does not need to know the phonemic alphabet or be able to transcribe English into that alphabet in order to write good poetry. What one needs is a good ear for the language.

Kenneth Burke shows us how sets of consonants, such as m - n - b - p - d - t - f - v, can create the music of a poem. Burke doesn't discuss vowels, merely quoting Coleridge to suggest that consonants are primary. So, what about vowels? Vowels can not be organized in sets as Burke does the consonants. Vowels are grouped by linguists into front, middle, and back, and into high, mid, and low — relative positions in the mouth. Here's sentence illustrating the front vowels:

"He will wed her." In order, the vowels are high front, mid front, low front, and then a mid vowel (an "r-colored schwa"). These vowels aren't related in the way that, for instance, the consonants in "Many bold friends told of Paris." Yet the sequence — the flow — of vowels is obviously essential to the music of a poem.

I don't believe that poems, good poems, begin in calculation. A good poems begins in intuition, in a hunch that a sequence of words, an experience, an idea, a feeling is worth writing about. The sounds, along with the other elements of the poem follow from that hunch (inspiration, if you will). Conscious thought enters in revision, is not part of the initial vision.

By way of a closing example, here are the first two couplets of Brandy Bauer's "Ghazal (Kabul)," from the July 2007 issue of The Ghazal Page. She uses both consonants and vowels very effectively.

A bleak season arrived when I alit at Kabul.
Plunged into nothingness, a skeleton, this Kabul.

Here in the street, festering water and dust.
Whose fires now choke the qanats of Kabul?

I won't do detailed analysis of these lines; you will be rewarded by reading them aloud carefully. Note the subtle, and effective, relationship of "arrived" and "alit" in the first line or of "street" and "festering" in the third line.

I plan to return to this topic soon. If you have comments, including examples, please send them along.

 

"Musicality in Verse"

The title of this post is the title of an essay by Kenneth Burke, a great literary theorist and philosopher. Burke's contributions have been somewhat overshadowed, perhaps, by the dominance of postmodernism for a numbe of years. Burke just wasn't fashionable. A Google search on "Kenneth Burke" produced a gratifying number of hits that look good. I'll provide only the University of Minnesota site linked above from his name.

The essay this post is based on, "Musicality in Verse," appears in Burke's The Philosophy of Literary Form, Louisiana State University Press, second edition, 1967. In the post, I put Burke's insights into my own words with my own examples. The topic is significant enough for working poets that I may follow it up in a later post. I highly recommend that you get Burke's essay, if possible, and read it.

Burke's main point is this: some speech-sounds closely resemble others, differing only in one or two features. These speech-sounds form sets and are used by poets as they use alliteration. Burke calls these patterns "concealed alliteration by cognates." Sounds in the middle or at the end of words also count as part of this approach.

Every language's sound system consists of phonemes — speech-sounds that make a difference in the meaning of words. Phonemes are defined by "minimal pairs": two words with different meanings in which the only sound difference is the pair of sounds being defined.

A common example is the two English words "bit" and "pit." These words differ only in the /b/ and the /p/ sounds, so they define /b, p/ as phonemes in English. Both /b/ and /p/ are made by stopping the flow of breath with the lips and then releasing it. The difference is that /b/ is voiced and /p/ is unvoiced. When you say "b," your vocal chords vibrate (unless you're whispering); thus, /b/ is voiced. You hear these differences or you couldn't understand English. Try saying both "bit" and "pit" with your hands over your ears. You will hear the buzzing of your vocal chords on the /b/ but not the /p/.

Webster's 1913 dictionary has this example in its definition of "alliteration":

Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheaved His vastness. – Milton.

The /b/ and /v/ alliterations in this line are obvious. Less obvious to one's analysis, although obvious to one's ear are the b, p. and v cognate alliterations. (I'm dropping the slashes, used to mark phonemes.) V is alliteratively cognate with both b and p because of its phonemic features: it is made with the upper lip and lower teeth and is voiced. The unvoiced -th in "Behemoth" and "earth" also alliterate cognately with v (lips and tongue). The medial /g/ in "biggest" is also part of this group of cognate sounds.

Milton's play with vowels are also important to the effect of this line (which is, remember, out of context). I won't go into vowels now, so I definitely will discuss this topic again.

Poets Online — Ghazal Archive

Among other topics related to ghazals and to poetry more generally, I will comment on relevant Web sites. The first of these is the ghazal archive of Poetry Online.

The first thing you'll notice about the Poets Online Ghazal Archive is the brown text on a white background. On my Macbook, at least, this color combination makes reading a little difficult. But only a little.

The archive begins with a paragraph defining/describing ghazals. Essentially, this paragraph defines the Persian ghazal and repeats the usual misinformation that the ghazal began in Persian, when it began in Arabic, as David Jalajel shows.The author couldn't have known about the Arabic ghazal, however, since it has been difficult for us monoglot English speakers to get detailed information about the ghazal. The opening paragraph also provides some brief information on Adrienne Rich and ghazals. A second, brief paragraph provides links to some other sources — actually, books for sale on Amazon.

The ghazals that follow use various forms: some radif, some qafiya and radif, one rhyming couplets, and a couple no rhyme (what can be called "free ghazals"). I'm going to quote a few shers here, but you really should visit the archive and read all the ghazals in their entirety. It will be worth your while.

from "Ghazal"
by Laura Shovan

Late summer an unexpected crop:  beans veiled by hand-shaped leaves.
I lift one veil: green leaves, green vine, the bean a hidden lover.

The imagery in the sher above is especially rich. Read the whole ghazal and see how she carries it through.

from "Parent Versus Child Ghazal"
by Catherine M. LeGault

We drink and smoke away our leisure-time as couch-
potatoes; and we wonder why our children slouch.

The enjambment between lines works very well and recalls what David Jalajel says about enjambment in the Arabic ghazal; this would be enjambment between the first and second hemistiches.

from "Ghazal at the Equinox"
by Lianna Wright

At the waterline, the taste of salt, sound of water,
feel of cold autumn, the sight of my daughter.

The shortening daylight makes me think
that the plant's turning sunward is even sadder.

The rhymes — qafiya — work nicely here. Perhaps it is "microrhyme" on "-er."

I hope posts like this one will extend the conversation on the ghazal in English and its possible forms.