In a week when we discovered football wasn’t – after all – coming home just yet, we launch our second instalment of the Crib Notes Summer School.
If you enjoyed getting your head – and/or ears – around the complexities of the Sestina in our first Crib Notes (Blog #57), you are primed to embrace the Ghazal.
Origins
‘Embrace’ is very much the operative word here. The Ghazal, rather disappointingly, is correctly pronounced ‘guzzle’, and originated as a poetic form in Arabic. It was picked up by Persian poets in mediaeval times and is now firmly associated with their favourite themes of love and loss and especially, losing in love. And we are definitely talking about erotic love in the Persian version. In a Persian Ghazal, a passionate embrace would be a much dreamed of clincher.
Component parts
The main building block of the ghazal is the couplet – groups of two lines. Each couplet must be grammatically complete. Repetition, as with the sestina, is a big feature of the ghazal, but this time rhyme is also vital, and must occur within a strictly defined pattern.
Every couplet must also end on the same word or phrase – this is called the radif. And as if that isn’t tricky enough, each time the radif crops up, it must be immediately preceded by the qafia – a rhyming word. In the first couplet, the foundational qafia occurs twice – just to make sure we’ve registered its sound. This qafia then mutates through each subsequent couplet so that a single rhyme is carried all the way through the poem.
There are two other conventions, one more stringently observed than the other. For the Persians, it was important that each line is of the same length and meter – modern poets tend to relax this rule. The final, rather delightful rule is that a proper name (usually the poet’s) is included in the final couplet.
Perhaps because the Persian form comes to us mostly through translation, you’ll find a lot of variation in the rigour with which these ‘rules’ are observed in poems that call themselves ghazals – but I like to work within the box if I can, before I start to bust that box apart; what we’re mainly embracing is the challenge. So, here goes.
Method
First, select your radif. This is going to get hammered home to your listener, so as with the keywords in a sestina, a homonym – a word that has two or more different meanings – might be the best choice for a radif. On the other hand, a word with one meaning, ending every couplet, will certainly drill home the poem’s obsession.
Then, you need a qafia. Aurally, this is also going to recur – or perhaps we should say echo – as the poem reaches for ever-more ingenious or surprising rhymes. Once again, exploring some possibilities before attempting the poem is a helpful way forward.
You can read and listen to my ghazal, called Small Change here, or find it nestled among other poems in the Love & Nonsense series, via the Listen tab in the main menu. You can also find all editions of the Summer School under the Crib Notes tab – again via the main menu.
Prep
Looking back on the notes I made when working on Small Change, I found two lists. In both lists it’s clear that the word I’ve settled on for my radif is ‘life’. I’ve no idea how I arrived at this decision. However, in the first list it’s clear I considered still/kill/fulfilled etc as the qafia’s rhyme.
Still life Kill life Fulfilled life Shrill life Nil life Daffodil's life
When I got to ‘daffodil’s life’, I must have – sensibly – decided this scheme was a dud. Looking at the second list, I can see that I’d chanced upon the potential of consistently using an adjective as my qafia:
Comfortable life Probable life Contemptible life Miserable life Snesible life Fabled life Able life Susceptible life Despicable
Somehow this suited the theme I was beginning to explore – a questioning of the kind of life the speaker is living. [As with the Sestina, I soon found this voice was more that of a character than my own. That could because I’m a dramatist – used to hiding behind characters – or perhaps because at some barely-conscious level, I wanted to escape the poem’s accusing glare…].
I also now realise I was, as poet, having my cake and eating it from a technical point of view. ‘Life’ has a fairly consistent meaning in the poem but having an adjective in the role of qafia means the kind of life is always changing. Put together, the phrase at the end of each couplet varies in meaning, like a homonym. I’m always happiest when there is opportunity for change or surprise in a poem, even when conforming to a rule.
As I worked on the poem I also detected something combative in the rhythm and rhymes of the ghazal – rather than the erotic notes so beloved of the Persians. As stated above, in my poem, the radif is ‘life’, and the different permutations of it provided by the adjectival qafia somehow worries away at my theme – the kind of life we should be living. The couplet form also slightly lends itself to the ding-dong of an argument – and that’s essentially what my ghazal is; an argument, and a political one at that. A far cry from erotic love, though it is in this case, a tussle between parties who love each other, I think.
Exemplars
Among quite a few ghazals you can read on the poetry foundation’s site, I really like this one https://www.poetryfoundation.org/podcasts/91214/ghazal-for-becoming-your-own-country
This poem is quite a dense read – the meanings need to be worked on before they yield and let you winkle them out. There is though wonderful musicality in the poet’s reading of the poem, and it reveals a great, assertive attitude. It seems that Angel Nafis has also picked up on the combative potential in the form. This is a poem about kicking over the traces – being tough enough to resist and to make your own way, rather than meekly following convention (or even your first, immediate desire). Given that theme, it’s great to see that this particular wordcage is no bar to expression – despite the poet observing its very complex rules quite tightly. There is the radif – ‘bride’. And there is the qafia – home/blown/grown/moan etc, After a slightly freer opening couplet, these two elements turn up exactly where they should. Paradoxically, the ghazal’s tight conventions are used to beat a drum for freedom; the speaker finds the strength for self-sufficiency. From there, it’s just one stepping-stone to self-determination.
Tips
I found this verse form need lots of work if you are going to achieve a supple(ish) flow of meaning – and writing out lists ahead of composing the poem was vital in exploring how the radif and qafia might work together to achieve the desired (if not, in my case, a desirous) effect.
Over to you. Let me know if you decide to tackle a ghazal – it would be great to hear how you get on. And do catch up with the Summer School next time on the wordcage – in a fortnight’s time – when we’ll be offering Crib Notes on another form, the Villanelle.
Till then
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Till next time.
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