Don't Muzzle the Ghazal

How Many Kinds of Ghazal?

I first learned about the ghazal over ten years ago, from a short note in a little magazine. The only information was that a ghazal is a series of couplets that are independent of each other. Not long after that, a friend sent me a copy of Poetry Pilot, with Agha Shahid Ali's advocacy of the "real" ghazal. As it turned out, Shahid advocated the Persian ghazal. We who try to write ghazals in English owe him a real debt: he clarified and focused our understanding of the ghazal form.

We English speaking and writing still don't know enough about the ghazal's form in the various cultures in which it developed and flourished. David Jalajel's presentations of Arabic forms are a valuable addition to our knowledge. There's surely more to learn about the ghazal in other languages and cultures. The Urdu ghazal seems very close to the Persian, with an exception that a ghazal can develop a single theme. Harsangeet Kaur Bullar's essay on the ghazal in India and Pakistan defines the nazm and qita for that tradition. A nazm is a ghazal that develops a single theme, and a qita is a group of couplets within a ghazal that is thematically unified. Her essay also discusses the place of the ghazal in Indian cinema.

So what's the answer to the question that titles this post? I cannot answer it definitively. Bullar mentions several other Indian languages in which the ghazal as found a form. For instance, Sukhdarshan Dhaliwal, who has two ghazals in the August 2007 issue of The Ghazal Page, has published collections of ghazals in Punjabi. (The August issue will be online by August 1 GMT.)

My tentative answer at this point: we English ghazalkars may benefit from thinking of two distinct ghazal forms, the Persian and the Arabic. I'm convinced that, if the ghazal becomes a truly English form of poetry, it will have features that distinguish it from any of the traditions for which it derives.

"Why, That Don't Rhyme!"

Questions of rhyme arise every time we seize the end of a line in our teeth and shake it for relief.

Or something.

Years ago, teaching in the Missouri State Prison, I read the class a poem from the textbook. I've forgotten the poem, something British I think, but I've never forgotten the student who said, "I don't like poetry that don't rhyme." The poem did rhyme; he just didn't hear the rhymes as I read. These inmates were intelligent, articulate men, too, but I didn't hammer each rhyme as I read.

For many people, poetry is that form of discourse that rhymes. No rhyme = no poem.

The weave of sounds in a poem is much more subtle than the clanging of obvious rhymes. (Okay, that's pejorative: good rhymes don't clang.) However, the play of sounds that are closely related, the patterns of alliteration, assonance, consonance, and shifts in stress make a good poem much more subtle than the scansion one might render in a simple, abstract notation of weak - strong syllables and end-rhymes.

For instance, here's the notation for an iambic pentameter rhyming couplet:

    x / | x / | x / | x / | x / A
    x / | x / | x / | x / | x / A

            (x = unstressed, / = stressed, | marks the boundaries of the feet, A is the poor old rhyme.)

What does that tell you? It could analyze any poem written in this form; this kind of notation is so abstract it obscures the concrete actuality of a poem.

The ghazal is essentially a form of rhyming poetry, although an unrhymed ghazal is possible (or so I think). Surprisingly, there's a question as to what counts as a rhyme. Friday evening, 13 July, The Ghazal Page published an essay on rhyme by David Jalajel: The Arabic Qâfiyah & English Rhyme – The Use of "Microrhyme" for Adapting Arabic Poetic Forms into English. I'm not going to summarize here what David says, but I strongly recommend his essay, along with another by him. These essays deal with concrete details of Arabic poetics and explores how they may be used in English ghazals.

I plan to post more on rhyme and sound-patterns. In the meantime, seize the line in your teeth and shake it until it sings.

So, What Are the Rules?

Good question. I really don't like a rule-bound, cookbook approach to poetic forms. "Give me the template, and I'll fill it in": that might result in a good poem, but it's basically a limiting approach. Sometimes, poets who must have rules say that without rules, a poem has no form. Stop and think a minute: if it exists, it has form of some kind, good, bad, effective, ineffective—but form of some kind.

But don't the "rules" define the form and distinguish a ghazal from, say, a sonnet? Form defines, yes, but the specifics that can be abstracted and put into formulas aren't enough. As a starter, browse some of the linked pages at the right, especially Ghazals in English. Poetic form is elastic, not brittle, malleable, not rigid. When form works right, it give the poet permission, direction: form can inspire the poet and set the direction of the poem. When form doesn't work right, it hobbles the poet, it sets limits to the poet's movement, voice, ability to dance and sing.

Here are a few basics of the ghazal form; not all are necessary in a poem for it to embody the spirit of the ghazal. What is the spirit of the ghazal? An insistent music; repetition with change; radical leaps in theme/image/mood.

Basics:

• Five to twelve couplets (can be longer)
• Each couplet is syntactically and thematically independent (not always)
• The same rhyme occurs throughout in the pattern aa ba ca da ea fa . . .
• The last couplet contains the poet's pen-name or another name
• Both lines of the first couplet and the second line of all the rest end with the same word or phrase (not a feature of the Arabic ghazal and not always required)
• The rhyme occurs just before the repeated word or phrase

For me, the structure of independent couplets is the necessary feature for a poem to be a ghazal. The other features have much value, but the absence of one or more does not keep the poem from being a ghazal (to me).

Note: A poem written in couplets need not be displayed visually in couplet format if the poet wants to use the visual appearance for a specific effect.

If you read some of the poems on The Ghazal Page, you'll get a sense of how I see ghazals: some have very conventional form, with all the parts; others have fewer of the features, and a very few may have nothing in common with ghazals but the leaps between images, themes, moods.

This poem by David Lunde exemplifies the strict form while defining it. Enjoy!