Gino's Ghazal Blog

Color Radif Issue Published

Early last fall, I issued a challenge on The Ghazal Page: to write ghazals with color words as the radif. The responses were very effective and varied ghazals. The special issue of these results is now officially published. The twenty-six ghazals are divided into five groups, with one ghazal, "Rainbow Ghazal," by Elaine G. Schwartz, as a proem for the whole issue. It was harder to name the groups in this challenge than in the earlier stone, sugar, or clouds and rain challenges. In the end, I used mixed categories: Motley, The Blues, Mixed Greens, Heat, and B & W. The label for each group fits it well, I think.

While most of the ghazals use a single color word as the radif, which is what I expected, some use several color words related to an over-arching idea. Perhaps the most unusual/unexpected category is B & W. There are six ghazals in this category, three dealing with "black" and three with "white." To be technical, neither black nor white is a color, black absorbing all visible wave-lengths and white reflecting all of them. One poet even asked about white being considered a color. These six ghazals definitely belong in this issue, and, while they're monochrome, they do add needed color to it.

The next issue is for January of 2010, only ten days away. I expect that issue to be a little late: I'm redesigning the main page for 2010, with substantial changes in layout, and am also creating the design for the 2010 issues.  If there is any delay, I trust that the 2010 debut will be worth the wait.

October Issue

The October issue of The Ghazal Page is now online. I hope you enjoy it. If you write ghazals, or are interested in giving them a try, you're invited to respond to the color radif challenge. I hope to see a ghazal from you!

A Rich Site on Ghalib

If you're new to Ghalib and just want to check out a few verses, you could try {18,3}, about Laila and Majnun; or {62,5}, which has a rueful sense of humor; or {71,2}, a brilliant tangle of curls and thoughts; or the impossibly simple and lovely {95,6}; or, if you're a wine-drinker, {114,5}. For amusement, try {116,3}; for cold chills, {126,5}; or for metaphysical delight, {138,1}, about the sky and an ant's egg; or {10,12}, about what holds our lives together.

via www.columbia.edu

Here's the link that Niranjan Sarkar shared in a comment. This site is maintained by Prof. Frances Pritchett at Columbia University. I've had time only to glance at it, but it is rich in information. Ghazals and shers by Ghalib are presented in transliteration as well as Devanagari, with scholarly glosses that show the different English possibilities of some Urdu words. Comments by others are also included.

If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you'll find a link to Prof. Pritchett's home page, which has many more links. As a note, I taught World Literature for a number of years; scholars from Columbia University were among the best sources I found.

The Best of Urdu Poetry

I've been reading two books recommended to me by Norman Darlington, whose ghazals appear in The Ghazal Page. I've already mentioned one, The Oxford India Ghalib and will comment on it again soon. The other book is also of interest to poets and to people interested in the ghazal. It is Celebrating the Best of Urdu Poetry, selected by Khushwant Singh and Kamna Prasad, and translated and introduced by Khushwant Singh. It is a Viking Penguin Book, published in India in 2007. It has a handsomely decorated hard cover. My copy is from the second printing, which is encouraging for the book's potential to attract an audience.

The book has a brief but informative introduction by Khushwant Singh. The poems are arranged chronologically, from Mohammed Rafi Sauda (1706-1781) to Zehra Nigah, a contemporary whose birth-date is not given. Each selection is presented with the original on the left page and the English translation on the right. The original appears in Devanagari script and transliterated into the roman alphabet. A paragraph introduces each poet.

By way of examples, here is a couplet from Ghalib's "Lament of Old Age,"

Where has the headiness of youth's evening drink gone?
It's time to get up and go, gone are the sweet dreams of dawn,

and a quatrain, "Silent Truth," by Hakim Momin Khan Momin,

There are some who remain silent
But are sunk in deep surmise,
Yes, they will speak the truth,
But when the price of truth is on the rise.

Khushwant Singh published an article about the contemporary significance of Urdu and Urdu poetry that you may find interesting in connection with this book.

The Lynx Leaps Three Times a Year

A new issue of Lynx (October 2009) is now online. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Lynx, it has been around for quite awhile, first as a print 'zine and then a Web 'zine. Its original focus was linking poetry, collaborative verse in the spirit of Japanese renga. If you google renga, you'll get some interesting hits. AHA Poetry, published of Lynx, is a good place to start investigating renga. Lynx retains an interest in collaborative poetry, which they now label "symbiotic" poetry.

I'm posting here about a new issue of Lynx because of their interest in, and support of, the ghazal. In fact, I first learned of ghazal form in Lynx, although I'd seen some of the early English ghazals  by poets such as Adrienne Rich, Jim Harrison, and Denise Levertov.

When you visit Lynx, click on "Solo Poems" in the left margin for a list of poems/poets. In this issue, you will find three ghazals by Steffen Horstmann, who has appeared in The Ghazal Page, and one by Ayat Ghanem. Another poet who has appeared in The Ghazal Page, C W Hawes, presents two haibun here.

My recommendation? Go to Lynx, read the poems, explore the AHA Poetry site, send them some of your own ghazals if you write them.

The Poetry of Notation

I've just published a page on this blog with the title, "The Poetry of Notation." It presents a fairly simple idea about a possibility for poetry. It discusses some of the poetics of Ezra Pound and Charles Olson and offers some suggestions and questions about how these ideas apply to writing ghazals in English.

For the record, I have been strongly influenced by Ezra Pound's poetry and poetics, as well as those of Charles Olson and William Carlos Williams. I read Pound and Williams much more often than Olson now. I did work with Olson's ideas of projective verse or composition by field. 

Writing this page suggested some further possibilities that I hope to pursue soon in posts or pages. While there's nothing especially original about the ideas in "The Poetry of Notation," I think the phrase is original and I find the idea exciting. Perhaps you will also.

Maintaining the Pure Ghazal, Part Three

Perhaps the intended irony of this title, "Maintaining the Pure Ghazal," isn't clear. I could've put quotation marks around pure to flag my ironic intention: Maintaining the "Pure" Ghazal. There are a couple of reasons why maintaining a pure ghazal form is impossible.

First, the ghazal has taken several forms over its history in several languages and cultures. Second, as a poetic form migrates to a new language and culture, it is bound to change due to differences in the new culture and language. These differences include linguistic features such as the ease of rhyming or the basis of meters; the differences also include symbols common in one culture and not in another. Also, whether a culture is high- or low-context is an important feature. (See the second part of this series of posts for a brief discussion of high-context and low-context cultures.

None of that means that a poet can write anything and call it a ghazal — well, actually, a poet can do just that, but it is neither respectful of the ghazal's origins and history nor helpful in understanding the form as a possibility in English. (Once a form is established, poets can warp it, as Williams Carlos Williams did in "Sonnet in Search of an Author." (Maybe more on that poem in a later post.) There has to be a recognized form for the poet to warp or deviate from; the ghazal is not yet at the point in English.

My hope is that The Ghazal Page is helping to naturalize the ghazal in English and to expand understanding of its possibilities. I recommend two items for you to peruse, "When I say 'ghazal,' I mean 'guzzle,'" which I just recently revised, and "Rules for Writing Arabic Ghazals in English — a Summary," by David Jalajel. My essay gives as clear and accurate a description of the Persian/Urdu ghazal form as I can manage. It is the form that Agha Shahid Ali defended as the "real" ghazal. David Jalajel's article applies the results of his research; there are several other articles by him presenting his results.

The prose section of The Ghazal Page hosts several articles and reviews by poets who've contributed to the 'zine as well as some by me. I hope that you will read these offerings and find them useful. Further essays and reviews are always welcome. That includes perspectives that differ from mine or that of the other writers.

I plan to add a page here that summarizes the points about Persian and Arabic ghazals from the articles linked above.

Maintaining the Pure Ghazal, Part Two

This post is more general than the previous one, but it does bear on the adaptation of the ghazal form to English.

Anthropologist Edward T. Hall distinguishes between "high-context" and "low-context" cultures. This useful distinction points out that in some cultures, the high-context ones, people share a great deal of information — stories, beliefs, values, historical lore, cuisine, and so on, and in other, low-context cultures, people share very little information.

Poets in a high-context culture can assume that readers share a large amount of information; in a low-context culture, poets tend to write for smaller groups of similar experience and education. An oblique reference can convey a great deal to many people in a high-context culture. In a low-context culture, readers may well need explanatory notes.

While high-context cultures still exist, many of us live in low-context cultures, as anyone who has taught literature to American college students can attest. The ghazal originated, of course, in high-context cultures. Now, it is migrated to a low-context culture. I hope essays and book reviews on The Ghazal Page as well as the ghazals. and posts on this blog will help provide some context. Dedicated poets and readers will need to pursue more sources, of course. My own grasp of the context certainly needs development.

The question I want to end with: How does living in a low-context culture affect one's work with the ghazal form?

Maintaining the Pure Ghazal, Part One

Some of us are concerned with maintaining the pure ghazal (the "real" ghazal in Agha Shahid Ali's terms). We have several decisions to make. This post discusses only a few of those decisions.

The first decision is what stage of which culture of the ghazal's history shall we choose to represent the pure ghazal? Many consider Ghalib to be the ghazal-writer par excellence. His culture, 18th century Indian culture of the Muslim rulers, had several stereotyped images for poets to use, notably the nightingale, the rose, wine, and the unavailable Beloved. These images were laden with cultural meanings.

The theme of love goes further back in ghazal history, to the meaning of "ghazal" in Arabic, which I've seen variously translated as "talking with women" or "flirting with women," thus the theme of romantic love as central to the ghazal. The unattainable Beloved easily blends into the Divine Lover, becoming an image for the poet's relationship to God. There can be a lot of ambiguity in a ghazal as to whether the Beloved is another person or God, or an image referring to both.

In Ghalib's society, marriages were arranged and moral women were strictly secluded ("parda" or "purdah"). One couldn't fall in love with a "good girl," or if one did, one must love from a distance. The alternative was to love a courtesan. These were women who were not "good," but were educated, sophisticated, and available. {The link will open a PDF file of the most relevant article a quick Google search could find.)

What is the contemporary ghazal writer to do with this theme? Some still live in societies that practice arranged marriages and purdah; many do not. Personally, I've been married faithfully for almost 50 years. My Beloved is my spouse. Other poets are in different situations, many of which differ in many ways from Ghalib's. Poetry comes out of the poet's total experience, not out of a defined form.

I hope to post further "Maintaining the Pure Ghazal" pieces in the near future. Your comments are welcome.

Great Book on Ghalib

Briefly — I'm reading The Oxford India Ghalib: Life, Letters and Ghazals, edited by Ralph Russell. It has excellent material on Ghalib's life, on his cultural and historical context, on his prose and poetry, as well as selected translations from both his Urdu and Persian ghazals. I highly recommend this book, which I got fairly quickly through a local book seller. You might check with South Asia Books.

Ghalib is one of the world's great poets who deserves more recognition by any lover of poetry. For those of us fascinated by the ghazal, this book provides much information and insight. I plan to post about it again. If you are familiar with this book, or with Ghalib, what are your thoughts and responses?