The Ghazal:
At the SUNY Poetics Board there has been a major discussion of the war from a
political perspective over the past year. While most, if not all, of the poets involved
have been against the war, and against the president, I myself have wondered about the
human rights issues raised by the Taliban government and Saddam Hussein's regime. The
Taliban routinely executed young girls for the crime of learning to read. Saddam
Hussein and his sons had eclipsed all political opposition and have been responsible
for hundreds of thousands of gruesome political murders. Politics has a tendency to
demonize the other, while aesthetics is more of an invitation to love and beauty, and
brings out the very best in a people. While condemning the aberrant political
practices of some contemporary Islamic countries, I also wanted to try to see the very
best of the Islamic tradition. One place to look for this is in their great Sufi
poetic and mystical tradition. While the political situation leaves a great deal to
be desired in both the West and the Middle East, and the ugly war that is on-going in
an attempt to resolve it, the poetic situation seems to be on more solid ground. I
invited the poets of the SUNY Poetics list to join me in a contest that would allow us
to work in the Sufi tradition of the ghazal -- an old form going back at least to
classical poets such as Rumi. At first I didn't know anything about the form, and so
I wrote one just to kick things off based on a few simple rules. Those rules and my
ghazal is below. Since that initial post we had good discussions over the three
weeks of the open contest. What are the precise rules? Do the precise rules matter?
Is it a feeling? Or is the ghazal feeling created in fact by the rules? As we
pondered and debated these and other questions a sense of the immensity of a culture
came before us that wasn't linked strictly to the sound-bites fed to us by the nightly
news. The Islamic/Sufi tradition that contains the ghazal also contains a marvelous
humor, tremendous music, and a mystical tradition that has reached crescendos which
could cause a countervalent sense of "shock and awe." While the post was initially
advertized as a contest, there was such an eloquent outcry against hierarchical
(especially that posed by Kazim Ali) that I decided to let the poems speak for
themselves, and to let each participant and reader decide for themselves which are the
better ones. The poems were written by quite good poets many of whom with a book or
more behind them, and more ahead of them, and each poem had a special insight, as if
we were the blind men approaching the elephant (an old Sufi parable) and each held
forth with their own interpretation. Therefore, instead of one winning poem, there is
a higher sense in which our ghazals form one larger ghazal with many facets, and each
facet integral to the inquest.
-- Kirby Olson
> Kirby Olson wrote on July 6, 2003:
>
> > I was wondering if anybody would like to join me in a festival of the ghazal?
> > It is a format widely used by Islamic and Sufi poets. By trying our hand at
> > them and perhaps some people posting some of the better ones from the classical
> > tradition, it would be a way to find an understanding of some of the high points
> > of that culture. I have heard that Rumi, among others, used this form. I could
> > pick the winner, or we could just have a free-form everybody wins sort of
> > festival. People could even try to write deliberately bad ones, which can be
> > fun.
> >
> > The classical ghazal is very complicated, but I propose a simpler format. You
> > have to have at least five couplets. Each couplet has to stand on its own as a
> > separate poem. The first two lines have to end with the same word. Then from
> > then on, the second line of each of the five to ten couplets has to end on that
> > word, too. I cooked up an example recently, and send it in in hopes that my
> > ghazal will call out to others lying asleep in your preconscious!
The following ghazals were posted to the Poetics board between July 6, 2003 and
> July 24, 2003 when the contest officially closed. Any commentary on any or all
> of them would be interesting. I would like to discuss them. Let's try to keep
> the discussion from being too dogmatic or harsh, or to indicate that your
> viewpoint is the only possible one, as that turns everybody off. Appreciative
> or perceptive and illuminating conversation, like illuminating poems, is
> exploratory, and approaches the elephant of the ghazal from the viewpoint
>of the three blind men -- which began as a Sufi parable.
>
> Thanks so much.
>
> -- Kirby Olson, Contest Organizer
>
> P.S. I want to publicly thank Terrie Relf for organizing the poems
> electronically in the following order after she had volunteered to do so.
> People should beam a nice thought to her, as I would have been incapable of
> anything so technically complicated.
>
> -----
>
> A Note from Terrie Leigh Relf:
>
> If I made any errors in this process, please forgive me. You can contact me for corrections at: tlrelf@cox.net. I did have some problems with reformatting the first one. I snuck in one I wrote, too. <G>
>
>
>
> GHAZAL AT FIRST SIGHT
> by Daniel Zimmerman
>
> Whenever the couple thought to commence
>
> they wondered whether they ought to commence.
>
> Consider them angels and, as such,
>
> on heaven's template wrought to commence.
>
> Wingless, they hesitate:
>
> whence, after all, were they brought to commence?
>
>
> Dimming their gleam, they contemplate:
>
> under what master taught to commence?
>
>
>
> Breath catching breath, gaze catching gaze,
>
> frozen in silence they fought to commence.
>
>
>
> How could their longing have grown so adept,
>
> innocent of what they sought to commence?
>
>
>
> Shining in darkness, they ponder the trust
>
> Daniel mustered with naught to commence.
>
>
>
>
> GHAZAL ON A DAY OF MEDICAL FAST
> By Charlotte Mandel
>
> Fasting empties the brain as well as the stomach.
> Hunger for eclipsed names impels as the stomach.
>
> Gold hoops of navel rings bobble along 5th Avenue,
> hip-slung jeans chiming la belle as the stomach.
>
> The waist of my prom gown refuses the zipper.
> What organ expands as many cells as the stomach?
>
> Two frat brothers, portly after decades, connect
> via belt buckle--hail/farewells at the stomach.
>
> Once upon a skyscraper summit, Diana poised with bow--
> each quivering muscle show-and-tell as the stomach.
>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Untitled ghazal
>
> By Kathleen Edward
>
> she steps a pint across
> unbroken line.
>
> the hockey game again,
> game six.
>
> named for the island, cat
> a clipped tail.
>
> david in his blue blue shirt
> becomes the sky.
>
> her kathleen edwards t-shirt
> is nearly new.
>
>
>>
>
>
>
> quick ghazal on bank & gloucester streets
> By Rob McLennan
>
>
>
> the immediate world exists
> at right angles
>
> the intersection where the bank,
> office towers, tim hortons
>
> in the throes of service -- public
> & private -- plastic picture tags
>
> on strings
>
> the rain puddles out
> to biblical proportions
>
> what cabs tear by
> plaster multiple suits
>
>
>>
>
>
>
>
> Ghazal
>
> By
>
> Martha L Deed
>
> Rules of the game form a comfortable cage.
> Are those who don't play in or out of the cage?
>
> The fawn munching lilies looks into the house,
> watches people drink tea on display in their cage.
>
> Dozens of red trilliums grow deep in the woods.
> Each blooms safe from prey in its own metal cage.
>
> He who revolts against train and plane schedules
> rides locked to the highway in his own rolling cage.
>
> She climbs from the car on the run from her spouse,
> Gaunt, haunted, and amazed to be free from her cage.
>
> M writes her stories with passionate care.
> His raging dismay puts truth in a cage.
>
>
>>
>
>
>
>
> ghazal
>
> By
>
> Matt Keenan
>
> why, my Love, do bees suck the peach
> in holes beetles dug to make a breach
>
> and ants in foraminiferal delight hasten to feast
> between rims of the cratered peach
>
> when peach trees are not seen for miles around
> then one alone finds one alone makes love beyond reason's bound
>
> that it is beyond any one's love's reach to find
> like the moth the penumbra of light it breaches then round it winds
>
> or a dog to a bitch in heat it leeches doesn't mind
> to hearken to a pheromonic chemical bark
>
> the beetle flies to the peach's meat it breaches
> like a car caroming to a screeching halt to one in park
>
>
>>
>
>
>
>
> Ghazal Improvisation
>
> by Charlotte Mandel
>
> My expositional brain working to grasp at thought
> develops eggshell cracks, hence, leakage of thought.
>
> So many spins of the carousel, riding uncountable rounds,
> so dizzy I don't catch the brass ring of a single thought.
>
> As the dock creaks your figure sways. I gaze
> nonplussed at the foamy tracks of your thought.
>
> Sky a gray canvas. Call a breeze to daub fantasy clouds
> where we stand among wild poppies, lost in thought.
>
> Whatever I say whatever I do fails of any success:
> Oh Charlotte, self-detractor of pride in poetic thought!
>>
>
>
>
>
>
> Interviewing with the NSA Ghazal
>
> By Millie Niss
>
> I seriously thought the interviewer might be an alien:
> when he asked: "do you plan to marry your enemy alien?"
>
> He and I were almost an expired item
> But he was "mon Stephane," not a dangerous alien
>
> "And the others?" the interviewer asked watching the wires
> and bands which ran all over me, an alien
>
> a cyborg, mechanical, electrical, easy to judge
> unlike the hands of an unknowable alien
>
> "You must list them," he said, every one that you fraternized
> "I had friends who were tan, they weren't googly-eyed aliens"
>
> After hours, they released me, and I knew they wouldn't hire me
> good riddance! I ran from these androids and aliens
>
> I couldn't forget that they asked about thoughts
> not just deeds I had planned but mere whisperings of the alien
>
> and we're none of us pure, and I don't like the president
> am I next when they come to ban all the aliens?
>
>
>>
>
>
>
>
> Ghazal for my new alien friends
>
> by
>
> Terrie Leigh Relf
>
>
>
> Extraterrestrial, they traveled far, then further in space.
>
> So many planets, so difficult the choosing, in space.
>
>
>
> Their ship descended to earth, but thought it elsewhere, in space.
>
> Cartographers, with nimble minds, unraveling in space.
>
>
>
> Down to the ocean floor, their ship settles-this is not in space!
>
> On the surface, a torrential storm, waves rising in space.
>
>
>
> Octopi-kindred creatures? Tentacles flail about in space.
>
> Indigo ink! A definite sign of intelligent beings in space.
>
>
>
> Data-retrieval probes are released. What's this and that in space?
>
> Semi-cloaked crafts zip-zag. Seeing is believing in space.
>
>
>
> Back-and-forth communication about what they found in space.
>
> "Terra souvenir!" They tell me upon waking in space.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>
>
>
> Ghazal, October 2001
> by Susan Firghil Park
>
> I wake uneasy, spy the face of a ghost in the mirror.
> Confused stranger's eyes just like my own in the mirror.
>
> "Pigeon's blood children" a phrase from my dream.
> Children of loss? desire? war? I'm alone in the mirror.
>
> A cracked plate on tiled kitchen floor. Pieces pick up
> easy, not like these shattered tableaux in the mirror.
>
> "Talk sense, doctor," said the patient, finally, to Erickson.
> Word salad news only leaves scrapes and bones in the mirror.
>
> Salmon jump in the river, cormorants swim. I scrub
> the sink, hyper, practice chanting "aum" in the mirror.
>
> Susan, plant lilies to place at the feet of the dead; pray for
> pieces of old arabesques landscaped by sorrow in the mirror.
>
>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>
>
>
> Mathematical Beauty
>
> By Kirby Olson
>
> Divide the sun by beauty
> And you get mathematical beauty
>
> Add a cup of sherbet to long division
> & up jumps mathematical beauty
>
> Give the goose a flair for algebra
> A feather in the cap of mathematical beauty!
>
> Tie up traffic with Euclid's geometry
> & you'll sniff the bouquet of mathematical beauty
>
> Everywhere you look there's a cube or a square
> But it's rare to see mathematical beauty.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> "Planet of the Republicans"
> by michael helsem
>
> Now that our world has been taken over by red-assed
> baboons,
>
> Those who are not will still want to act like
> red-assed baboons.
>
> Ask for a little mercy, ask for some sense
> You're sure to be shouted down by a choir of red-assed
> baboons.
>
> We few cowed humans left when we meet each other
> Can't even bring ourselves to say the words "red-assed
> baboon".
>
>>
>
>
>
>
>Agha Shahid Ali called RAVISHING DISUNITIES: Real Ghazals in English (Wesleyan University Press, 2000). I am sure the book will please >you. And may I be immodest and say the following ghazal of mine is included in the book. Here it is.
>>
>
>
> How Many Bouquets
>
> By Harriet Zinnes
>
> The lover holds the letter in the palm of his hand.
> Unread it flutters as it wilts in his hand.
>
> There are oceans to cross but the harbor is sealed.
> Why not, she said, pick up shells from my hand?
>
> Bejeweled the queen makes a tragic false start.
> Her consort, resigned, plays the card in his hand.
>
> It is bewitched, the child cries out to her nanny,
> Who laughs as the parrot eats from her hand.
>
> There are eels, a dead whale, a voice in the sand.
> Will Poe kiss the unringed, quivering, ghostlike hand?
>
> She is cold in her bed and the butler with tea
> Wavers once, wavers twice, spills the tea on her hand.
>
> It is the story of the rose. How many bouquets?
> The tide slaps the oozing sand. Unmanned, he slaps her hand.
>
>
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