Ghazals

Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghazal

Poets.org:  Heather McHugh  www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15452

The Ghazal page:   www.ghazalpage.net/2010/fall_schmottlach.html

• A ghazal is a series of couplets. Each couplet is an independent poem, although a thematic continuity may develop. This feature leads to "jumps" between couplets, a discontinuity similar to the linking in a Japanese renga. According to Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr., what in English is a couplet is, in Persian, one long line with a strong caesura.
• Traditional themes that focus on romantic love and mysticism.
• Both lines of the first couplet (called the "matla") and the second line of each succeeding couplet have the same monorhyme ("qafia") and refrain ("radif").
• The refrain (radif) is the same word or short phrase (or even syllable, according to Ali).
• A. J. Arberry says that each couplet of the Persian ghazal ends in a monorhyme (words ending with the same vowel+consonant combination), but he does not mention the refrain.
• All the couplets are in the same meter. (Ali does not mention meter.)
• The poet "signs" the last couplet ("makhta") by including her/his name or pen name ("takhallus").

Ghazal (pronounced "ghuzzle") is an Arabic word that means "talking to women."

History.

The Ghazal was developed in Persia in the 10th century AD from the Arabic verse form qasida. It was brought to India with the Mogul invasion in the 12th century. The Ghazal tradition is currently practiced in Iran (Farsi), Pakistan (Urdu) and India (Urdu and Hindi). In India and Pakistan, Ghazals are set to music and have achieved commercial popularity as recordings and in movies. A number of American poets, including Adrienne Rich and W.S. Merwin, have written Ghazals, usually without the strict pattern of the traditional form.

Form.

A traditional Ghazal consists of five to fifteen couplets, typically seven. A refrain (a repeated word or phrase) appears at the end of both lines of the first couplet and at the end of the second line in each succeeding couplet. In addition, one or more words before the refrain are rhymes or partial rhymes. The lines should be of approximately the same length and meter. The poet may use the final couplet as a signature couplet, using his or her name in first, second or third person, and giving a more direct declaration of thought or feeling to the reader.

Style.

Each couplet should be a poem in itself, like a pearl in a necklace. There should not be continuous development of a subject from one couplet to the next through the poem. The refrain provides a link among the couplets, but they should be detachable, quotable, grammatical units. There should be an epigrammatic terseness, yet each couplet should be lyric and evocative.

For examples and more on Ghazals, see the anthology edited by Agha Shahid Ali: Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English (Wesleyan University Press, 2000). Included are seven lovely Ghazals by William Matthews and a number of other fine ones.

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History: did the form of the Ghazal influence the form of the Sonnet?

Editor's Postscript [JZ]: While composing the essay on the Sonnet, I asked Len if he thought the form of the Ghazal influenced the form of the Sonnet. His reply is helpful: "I have my doubts. I would guess that many other rhyming forms were common in Italy and elsewhere in Europe in the centuries before the 13th century. The Sonnet would then be a new variant of rhyming poetry. The Ghazal employs a repeated refrain preceded by a rhyme, not just a rhyme." Len illustrates the Ghazal's form with this layout, where "1R" represents the repeated refrain preceded by a rhyme; the other lines end with non-rhyme words, represented by "A," "B," and so on:

1R 1R A 1R B 1R C 1R etc.