Gino's Ghazal Blog

The November Issue of The Ghazal Page

The November issue of The Ghazal Page is now online. It has six fine ghazals by five effective poets. While the issue isn't exactly seasonal, there is a kind of sobriety or starkness about these ghazals, or about some aspects of them, that seems appropriate.

Where I live, we've had a lot of rain, with the danger of flash floods and the streets of one small river-front town flooding. Waking after midnight to the roll of thunder is pleasurable to me, but the rain seems more than sufficient. The general trend of the daily temperatures is downwards. One morning soon, I'll go out to the car and find I have to scrape ice off the windshield before I can drive it. The ghazals in this issue feel appropriate to this season. I hope that you enjoy them.

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!

Special Issue of The Ghazal Page

The results of the tercet challenge are now on The Ghazal Page, over 20 ghazals by nearly 20 poets. For information on the tercet format for ghazals, visit this page.

Enjoy!

Summer 2009

Here it is, August 2nd, and I've just published the June and July issues of The Ghazal Page, along with the August issue, as the summer 2009 issue. The delay was not for lack of good poems to publish. Other factors slowed down this publication. The September issue will appear by September 6th.

Before September, I will layout and publish the tercet challenge issue, which is also later than it should be.

One feature of the summer issues I want to call your attention to is the six qasîdas by David Jalajel. Often called "odes" in English, the Arabic qasîda is closely related to the ghazal. If you try your hand at qasîdas, I would like to see the results; it would be worthwhile to publish more English qasîdas for contrast with English ghazals.

If you have any comments on the summer issues, please post them as comments on this entry.

A Moon in June isn't Actually a Boon

Just a quick note on a couple of things.

The June issue is late (obviously). I hope to work on it this weekend and get it posted. I have two other projects in mind that I hope to publish this summer, in July and August. One of these is a tenth anniversary issue of The Ghazal Page. I'll describe the other later.

The second thing is that the tercet challenge remains open for about 12 days. I have a number of good tercet ghazals in hand and hope to see more. The response to the challenge is encouraging.

There are some other ghazals from new contributors that will be published over the next few months. In four weeks, I'll be retired and expect to spend more time working on The Ghazal Page. This blog should see more frequent posts then as well.

Two New Issues

A little late, but . . . there are two relatively new issues of The Ghazal Page online. I hope you enjoy them!

First, the Stone Radif Challenge issue. I received nearly two dozen good ghazals for this challenge. The individual ghazals work together to create a multi-faceted meditation on "stone."

Secomd, the May 2009 issue. The ghazals for this issue accumulated over a period of months. As submissions arrived, a theme developed. These six ghazals all relate to summer, with appropriate freshness and lightness.

A sidenote: I prefer to see the seasons beginning on the traditional dates for the temperate climate zone; thus, summer begins on 1 May. Thus, midsummer's day comes in mid-June, around the summer solstice that is conventionally thought of as the beginning of summer.

A last item: the tercet challenge runs until June 15. There are some good ghazals in this form in the folder already. Why don't you send some more?

Not a "Gotchya!" (but it is April Fools' Day)

The previously announced April Fools' issue of The Ghazal Page is online now. I hope you will visit it and find the half-dozen poems there amusing and provocative. These ghazals aren't practical jokes or tricks, but they are, variously, funny. playful, intense . . . . When the first two or three of these poems were submitted, I wasn't sure whether to use them. While I like them, the tone of the poems didn't seem to fit into the tone of most issues of the 'zine.

Then I thought, Why not a special issue? As a few other ghazals with unusual tone showed up, the "April Fools'" title seemed like a good idea. April Fools', yes, but I promise not send out a message that you've been tricked!

April Fools' Ghazals, Coming Up!

In the last few months, several people sent me humorous or satirical ghazals. Almost all the ghazals on The Ghazal Page are pretty serious, with any humor or lightness being in a witty phrase or metaphor. I wasn't sure what to do with the ghazals referenced in the first sentence — and then I remembered April Fools' Day! These ghazals will appear online on 1 April, give or take an international dateline. This issue is not a prank, although maybe I should've done that.

As far as I can tell, April Fools' Day is a European observance (and North America too). I hope that readers from non-April Fools' cultures will appreciate this silliness.

Crows Caw

I've messed with yoga for a number of years, mostly self-taught from books. My town now has a movement studio -- andFLEW! -- with excellent classes in everything from ballroom dancing to t'ai chi to yoga. I attended my first early morning class (6:30) today and remembered a haiku I wrote a couple of decades ago:

yoga at sunrise
distant crows caw as I
become a cobra

from Nose to Nose, by Gene Doty. Brooks Books, 1998.

As a result of this morning's practice, I have felt looser and lighter all day. Although I haven't heard crows cawing, I did see and hear swallows calling in two notes as they swooped and circled overhead.

I heard the swallows while walking my dog; she looked up at their cries but lost interest quickly. They have remained with me as part of the yoga of this cold cloudy day.

And? -- learn your form, develop it, and then relax into it. Don't forget to breathe!

September Songs

The September issue of The Ghazal Page is now online. I hope that you will not only read it, but enjoy at least some of the six poems presented. There's a stronger thematic thread than sometimes: loss, aging, time, and dancing as a way of transcending these things.

If you have responses to any of the poems or about the issue as a whole (or the Editor's Comments), and you'd like to share your responses, please submit them as a comment to this post.

If you are writing ghazals, don't overlook the sugar radif challenge. Keep my bowl full and my cubes stacked high!