March Issue of The Ghazal Page

The March issue of The Ghazal Page is freshly online. I hope you'll read and appreciate the five ghazals there, under the title "from American Amnesiac: A History in Ghazals, by Diane Raptosh. While these poems depart in some significant ways from the Persian/Urdu form, they use the ghazal approach effectively to narrate an experience of amnesia and raise questions about identity.

Raptosh especially departs from the Persian/Urdu form by enjambment of lines and couplets, sometimes radically. The Arabic ghazal does, of course, enjamb lines. Raptosh's departures from the "orthodox" form give her ghazals a strong flavor of twentieth century verse and reinforce the themes of loss and searching in the poems themselves.

A text that confronts or confounds one's expectations can be richer in meaning than a completely predictable poem. A basic purpose of The Ghazal Page is exploring the possibilities of the ghazal as a poem in English in the 21st century. While The Ghazal Page itself is not set up to facilitate discussion, I do invite comments and responses here on Gino's Ghazal Blog, so please feel invited!