Don't Muzzle the Ghazal

"Clouds & Rain" Online

The clouds and rain radif challenge has reached its goal: a special issue of The Ghazal Page, presenting 13 excellent ghazals using the phrase "clouds and rain" as the radif. I'm very pleased with the results. Please have a look: I hope you'll be pleased as well.

The second radif challenge will be to use the radif "moon"; poets may add an adjective — full moon, autumn moon, hunter's moon, and so on, but the same adjective should be used consistently throughout.

The deadline is 2008 June 30. Please use "moon" in the subject line of an email submitting your ghazal(s) (up to three). Also, please send entries in the body of a plain text email, not as attachments or in formatted email.

Meanwhile, I plan to publish monthly issues; the next one will be about April 1.

Clouds & Rain in March

Two exciting items are coming up on The Ghazal Page.

The March issue should go online next weekend, perhaps Friday evening. The issue has six ghazals by three quite different poets. C W Hawes and Sukhdarshan Dhaliwal have appeared before; Bernard Gieske is new to The Ghazal Page, with a couple of very strong ghazals.

The other exciting item is the special Clouds and Rain issue. I've begun compiling it and hope to publish it within two weeks. Some of the poets are new to The Ghazal Page, and others have appeared here before.

The results of the radif challenge were very satisfying. I plan to announce another soon. Different poets using the same radif leads to some exciting contrasts. When the special issue is online, I will post a notice here.

Urdu Studies in Wisconsin

The University of Wisconsin at Madison publishes the Annual of Urdu Studies, sponsored by its Department of Languages and Cultures of Asia. Click on the link and you'll find several items (articles, reviews, poems) related to the ghazal and its cultural context in Urdu. (Thanks to David Jalajel for pointing me to this site.)

One item that particularly caught my attention is the article, "The Rama Story of Brij Narain Chakbast," by Neil Krishan Aggarwal. Toward the beginning, Aggarwal says,

Several generations ago, scholars spoke of Valmiki's Ramayana as the "original" and all others as "variations" (Hopkins 1926), a tenet which Ramanujanlater disputed in his suggestion that texts be treated on their own terms as "tellings," to be read intertextually to examine "what gets translated, trans-planted, transposed" (1991, 24).

This quotation clearly addresses the issue of canonicity: One of India's two major epics, Ramayana exists in numerous versions, with the one traditionally ascribed to Valmiki being the "original." The epic continues to be an important scripture for Hindus.

My concern isn't Ramayana, but the notion of the "real" version of anything, which is to say the canonical version, the authoritative version. I recently discussed this issue on my blog, NotesETC: "Which Is the Real Story?" This post talks about The Lord of the Rings, novel, movie, radio drama.

The traditional view is that, in the face of different versions, one version is the "real" one. Aggarwal's point is that, rather than canonizing one version as the real one, we inter-relate all versions, study them and compare them and profit from difference, likeness, and variation.

Does the same approach apply to the study of the ghazal form?

The Process of Canonization

Joshua Gage's comment on "Canon Fire" gives a good look at how the ghazal is faring in English. (I wonder how many of the few ghazals he sees are Persian or free in form, and if any are Arabic.) Those of us who believe the ghazal can be an important form in poetry in English have to keep advocating and keep writing ghazals and publishing them.

There is a long ways to go. I'm teaching creative writing this semester. For poetry, I use Creating Poetry by John Drury (Writer's Digest Books, 1991). I've used it as a text before; Drury provides good, basic information and advice on a variety of issues related to poetry. However.

However, his material on the ghazal is very inadequate. The book hasn't been revised since 1991, and much more is now available about the ghazal than then. Drury focuses on the ghazals by Adrienne Rich and Jim Harrison — accomplished poems, of course, but working only one possibility of the form. He does advise using the same rhyme throughout, a reference to the qafiya, I suppose. One could do worse than starting with Drury's description of the ghazal, but it would be nice to see the book updated.

As side comment, Drury's account of the haiku is very inaccurate. In 1991, even, much better information on the haiku in English was available. He doesn't understand the difference between haiku and senryu and the only genuine English haiku he cites are Jack Kerouac's. Etheridge Knight and Richard Wilbur are both excellent poets, but the poems they chose to call "haiku" simply aren't.

For more on haiku, see the Haiku Society of America's definition and AHA Poetry's material on haiku. (Their information on tanka, sijo, and ghazal is good also.)

Canon Fire

Poet and critic Anthony Hecht makes a brief comment on the canonization of poetic forms that we might apply to the ghazal. The comment occurs in Hecht's essay, "The Sonnet: Ruminations on Form, Sex, and History." The second section, "The Form," begins

As any form becomes canonical, it invites experimentation, variation, violation, alteration.

from Melodies Unheard, 2003, p. 53

Hecht goes on to briefly mention sonnet variations by Gerard Manley Hopkins, Elizabeth Bishop, Mona Van Duyn, and Rimbaud. Many others could be listed.

The application to the ghazal's migration into English is obvious. I take Hecht's remark to be historic and descriptive, not a stated goal. The open question is, "Has the ghazal become canonical in English?" If so (or if when), how will we know? What do you think?

My thanks to Steffen Horstmann for pointing out this essay. Hecht's critical essays are well worth reading.

Tornadoes & Cricket

It's been too long since I posted here. Now that we're past the first of the year, and I'm (almost!) ready to begin a new semester, perhaps I can post more regularly and more frequently.

A week ago, we had unusually warm weather here. My wife and I went to southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma to visit family and friends. It was shirt-sleeve weather. Some days before, we had some snow and ice. Right now, the weather is more seasonable.

We walked on the Oklahoma State University campus and enjoyed watching an informal cricket game played by a group of Indian students. Like sandlot baseball, the game was clearly more for fun than for serious competition.

a pickup cricket game
on a warm Saturday in winter:
the wicket a domed lid
from a trash can
"Walla! Walla!

(I think I caught the encouraging cheer correctly.)

We returned to the Ozarks on Sunday. Monday night we were under tornado warnings from around 5:00 PM until after midnight. The sirens blew frequently after about 10:00 PM. The only shelter we have is a small closet under a stairway. Every time the sirens sounded, Rose, the dog, and I went into the closet. Our house dates back to the American Civil War — 145 years. Union cavalry officers were billeted in our house back then.

taking shelter
in an old closet
we breath dust
from an officer's coat

The storms extended from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Rolla, Missouri, a distance of about 290 miles. We didn't suffer any damage, but further southwest there was serious property damage and a few deaths. We listened to a radio station from Camdenton, Missouri. The announcer talked on the telephone with several trained weather spotters: Baily, Meatman, Donny, Router, Rev are the names I remember. These folks called in from various locations, including interstate overpasses from which they could see the storms roaring up Interstate 44.

Could You Stand a Poetry Stand?

It's an icy, snowy Saturday afternoon in the Ozarks, not bitterly cold but below freezing. Putting off some work, I poked around on the Internet and found "Poetry Stand," by Douglas Goetsch, in the Autumn 2007 issue of The American Scholar. Goetsch writes about a poetry field trip he took a group of students on, when he was teaching poetry at the New Jersey Governor’s School of the Arts.

Goetsch had the students run a poetry stand in Princeton, before the gates into the campus. Anyone could come to the stand and request a poem in any form about any topic. The students used scouts to bring some "customers" to the stand (there was no charge for the poems), but many people approached voluntarily. It would seem that if you offer people poetry that relates to their concerns, some of them will take you up on the offer.

I recommend Goetsch's article because it raises issues of poetry and the general public, of the attitude of poets toward "ordinary" people. His work with the students went a long way, apparently, to dismantle their initial perception of themselves as strange and wonderful and other people, non-poets, as dull and boring. Is the poet really a winged being from another realm, someone excruciatingly special, or is the poet a human much like others, but with the talents and training to voice human experiences in meaningful and moving ways? The statement of the opposites is mine, but I believe they reflect "Poetry Stand" accurately.

Goetsch sees poets as humans who can articulate human experiences into poetry. He is thoroughly focused on craft. I pretty much agree, with the qualification that there are as many ways of being a poet as there are of being human. And perhaps the phrasing is misleading: if "being a poet" means that one is a person who can write poems, that's fine; if "being a poet" means one is a person who is strange and wonderful and unlike the ordinary — well, ultimately, all of us are strange and wonderful, not just those who designate themselves as such.

December Update

Even though it's still November — Thanksgiving in the Ozarks, good smells from the kitchen, the grandkids' puppy playing with frozen leaves in the backyard — even though it's November for eight more days, I am thinking about, planning for, December.

In the last post, I announced the poets that will be in the December issue. Add to their number, Conrad Geller. Four poets — Bill Batcher, Conrad Geller, Steffen Horstmann, Cathryn Shea — and seven ghazals.

An while you're reading, let me remind you of the "clouds and rain" radif challenge. I do have some entries, with more promised, but suprise me, okay?

Thanksgiving morning, the household awakens to wind and snow;
My grandchildren's puppy dances with leaves in wind and snow.

An isolated ghazal couplet ("sher") is called a fard, at least regarding Ghalib's poetry. The link goes to my 2004 Ghazal Blog, where "fard" is briefly defined. (I wouldn't stand by the main proposal in that post, by the way.)

December Descending

I almost wrote "December rising," to play on a familiar phrase, but then, December doesn't rise, at least until the solstice, when Light begins to press Dark's hand back to the tabletop in their eternal arm-wrestling bout, never a conclusion until the sun goes out or the planet stops spinning.

Now that I spit that, I want to tell you that the December issue of The Ghazal Page is shaping up. It will have silk wraps, dust, bread, and teeth, all in ghazals by Bill Batcher, Steffen Horstmann, and Cathryn Shea. Bill and Steffen have appeared in TGP before; Cathy is a welcome newcomer.

My postings here have become irregular. I hope to remedy that without falling (any further!) into banality. I will put up a note about each issue as I am preparing it; perhaps even more than one note.

There's another topic on the way, as well, by the end of the week, I hope. December is imminent, but we denizens of the USA have a holiday to deal with first. Family drama at its finest, its worst, most boring, most delightful. I'm looking forward to some snow. A big woop! woop! for December and the solstice to come.

From Arabic to Persian to German to English

One thing that has been missing in the discussion of the ghazal in English is a clear, objective account of its history. Now, on a small scale, David Jalajel has supplied that history. His account is relatively brief but satisfyingly detailed, answering many questions and, inevitably, raising others. His "short history" is well-sourced, with a bibliography that provides entry points even for those of us who are monoglot in English.

One question that I've found an answer to in David's essay: Is the ghazal defined more as a form (genre) or as a theme?

In its origins in Arabian poetry, the ghazal was formally the same as other Arabian poems and characterized by the theme of "dalliance." Ghazal is variously defined as talking, or flirting, with women, or as longing, and came thematically to be the expression of romantic, erotic, or mystic longing.

Read a few of the poems on The Ghazal Page and you'll soon see a much wider variety of themes. The discussion--not to say, controversy--about the ghazal's entry into English poetry has focused on form, a topic that David covers very well in the last part of his short history. Having the privilege of publishing this essay, I naturally endorse it. I hope that you will read it and discover your own response.

Please take some time to read the half-dozen new ghazals in the November issue of The Ghazal Page; and don't forget the "clouds and rain" radif challenge.