Don't Muzzle the Ghazal

Performing Ghazals

In the cultures of its origin and development, the ghazal is a lyric for music. Just a little time with Google will take you to sites about ghazal music, as in this site. In English, the ghazal is considered a form of poetry and not a form of lyric for songs. Poetry in English is often performed but not often with music. (Some lyrics stand well as poetry, but that's coming at the topic from a different angle.)

People from cultures where the ghazal is a form of music are often surprised by the Western view of it as a form of (printed) poetry. Western poetry has been performed to music: the poetry and jazz movement that originated in San Francisco is one example. Yet music and poetry haven't become very popular. Perhaps the ghazal can be the form that brings poetry back into cooperation with music.

Raindust, whose ghazal "Clouds & Rain" appeared in the special issue featuring that radif, has released a CD of poetry and music, Grin and Gulp Ghazals. Raindust performs the poems with an accompaniment of various percussion instruments (including a lawn mower!) and an oud on a few tracks. Here is her performance of "Clouds & Rain" in MP3 format.Download Clouds & Rain

Raindust's NadaOm Web site contains information on her practice and teaching of Nada Yoga (the yoga of sound). I will post soon on her mentor, Francis Brabazon. In the meantime, if you know of other meldings of the English ghazal and music, please let me know about them.

"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.

Belated Announcment

I posted the special summer issue of The Ghazal Page last weekend. It has three pages in it, equating to the issues for May, June, and July that didn't get published. There is a total of fifteen ghazals by seven poets. Some of the poets have appeared on The Ghazal Page before; others are new.

I hope you'll visit and read these poems. If you have comments or responses, send them as comments to this post.

Here's an announcement of something to come: The moon radif challenge is over; I'm putting the special issue together and expect to publish it sometime next week. There are 20 good ghazals there, all with "moon" as the radif. When the issue is published, I'll put a note here.