Don't Muzzle the Ghazal

Snow, Ice . . . & Sugar

We're having our first real winter. It's been cold before, 16 F., but last night it snowed--not much but enough to cover the grass and bushes. It didn't stick to streets and sidewalks. I scraped the first ice of the winter to get my car going this morning. While it can be inconvenient (& heating is expensive), I like cold weather and winter.

I published the sugar radif issue of The Ghazal Page yesterday. There are 18 ghazals in it, with a real variety of approaches and voices. There's also a new radif challenge, on the radif "stone." This time there's a possible variation: using "stone" as the basis of a monorhyme (qafiya) and writing an Arabic style ghazal. Ghazals in both styles are welcome.

I've tried to keep the radifs in the challenges as universal as possible. If anyone cares to suggest some possible radifs for future challenges, I'd be glad to have them. The easiest thing would be to post them as comments on this entry.

Is Writing Performing?

The two articles that David Jalajel mentions in his comment below are published on The Ghazal Page: "A Short History of the Ghazal," and "Rules for Writing Arabic Ghazals in English."

Be sure to read Dreamgrass's comment on this post. He wrote the wikiHow entry on ghazals; his comment explains the thinking behind his entry. Very much worthwhile.

This post responds to a couple of recent comments. In the first, Niranjan Sarkar clarifies a misconception in my post "Performing Ghazals." Contrary to the impression given by some Web sites, the ghazal is originally a form of poetry, not of lyric written for music. I appreciate this clarification, especially acknowledging that I should have checked out my assumption in writing the post. Niranjan, by the way, contributed a ghazal to the moon radif challenge.

I suspect there's more to be said about the relationship between ghazal in its origins and music. If anyone wants to pursue that question and send the results to me, I'd be interested. They could become an essay on The Ghazal Page or a comment here.

The other comment asks simply, are the instructions for writing a ghazal on wikiHow the "right way" to write a ghazal. The instructions as written would yield a ghazal in the strict Persian form; there are other ghazal forms, notably the Arabic ghazal, as explained by David Jalajel. The Ghazal Page has a wide variety of approaches to the form of the ghazal in English. (Some of these may go beyond the bounds of the ghazal, but they are still interesting explorations of the possibilities.

An early ghazal writer, Francis Brabazon, wrote many ghazals using only qafiya (the monorhyme), as well as some with radif. Like some of those of other poets, some of Brabazon's ghazals are written in rhyming couplets. Other poets do not use qafiya or radif and still produce impressive ghazals.

The article on wikiHow mentions having the same number of syllables in each line. Counting syllables hasn't been used widely in English verse. Counting stresses would work equally well. Effective metrics in English does not require absolute uniformity from line to line; in fact, absolute uniformity can result in great tedium. Even a purist of the Persian ghazal, Agha Shahid Ali, does not discuss meter in his (excellent) description of the form. (He does mention each line being "the same length," but this is the least helpful advice in his article.

Why have I posted my response to wikiHow here instead of editing the article or commenting on it? Mostly a matter of time; it's more convenient for me to put these ideas here. If I have time this weekend, I may add something to wikiHow, but I really don't want to rewrite the article that is there.

Please don't think of writing poetry as a matter of knowing the "rules" and applying them exactly.

Is writing performing? I'll perhaps pursue this point later. Right now, my answer is Yes, but the audience is not immediate and is diverse. The "performance" is in sharing the poem through whatever means.

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.

Ghazal + Villanelle = Guzzanelle

Steffen Horstmann sent me the link for a guzzanelle. What, you ask, is a guzzanelle? Click on the link, read the fine poem by Thomas Rodes, and you'll see. (If you'd like a refresher on the villanelle, Conrad Geller provides a very well-illustrated explanation.)

Given that both the ghazal and the villanelle require extensive repetition, the two forms meld nicely.

The journal publishing this guzzanelle, Umbrella, is new to me. It is nicely designed and well-edited. You'll find some ghazals by Chris Mooney-Singh here. (Chris has several poems in The Ghazal Page.) Another poet who has appeared in The Ghazal Page, Mary Cresswell, also has work in Umbrella.

If you want to submit poems to Umbrella, it has a detailed mission statement that is essential reading for readers and writers.

While I have your attention, there're still two weeks to submit ghazals for the "moon" radif challenge. I have several good ghazals already, but there's room for more.

The next issue should be online by early next week (around June 17, I hope).

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.

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.

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.