"Fresh Takes on the Moon"

The second radif challenge is over; the results are to be found on the Moon Radif Challenge pages.  There are 20 poems here by 15 poets, each poem demonstrating a "fresh take" on the moon. One of the contributors, Susan J. Erickson, commented on the isse, "these ghazals demonstrate that there are still fresh takes on the moon." These ghazals all use "moon" as the radif; some also use qafiya and other features of the traditional Persian ghazal. What I hope is that a reading of these poems will impress you with the range and variety of "takes on the moon."

The first two radif challenges went very well, so I have decided to make the radif challenge a standard part of The Ghazal Page. The next challenge is given on The Ghazal Page's main page. Entries are welcome, but please read the rules before sending a poem. Submissions should be in the body of an email.  As always, I prefer plain text emails. Email with special formatting can pose a real problem for interpreting the poet's intention. Plain text doesn't allow formatting of styles, but you can mark *bold* text by putting it between asterisks and /italicized/ text by putting it between front slashes (virgules).

Because of the limits of my time and energy, I've decided not to publish editor's comments along with these poems. I do invite your comments and responses to this post, however. Your thoughtful comments on the poems in the moon challenge issue will add a good dimension to this issue.