Gotta agree with you, Rebecca, about repetition rather than rhyme, or
at least feeling as such in english. Also,I think a lot of those who
try a ghazal-like poeming in english are more interested in those other
aspects, like the fact that the =leap= from one couplet to the next
seems hidden, a connection not apparent in argument or narrative. Thus,
although Richard's own version was neat, the clear connections from one
couplet to the next seem to be missing that aspect, which so many poets
found liberating. here's what John Thompson said about the ghazal;
The ghazal proceeds by couplets which (and here, perhaps, is
the great interest in the form for Western writers) have no necessary
logical, progressive, narrative, thematic (or whatever) connection. . .
.
The link between couplets . . . is a matter of tone, nuance:
the poem has no palpable intention upon us. It breaks, has to be
listened to as a song: its order is clandestine.
The ghazal has been practiced in America (divested of formal
and conventional obligations) by a number of poets, such as Adrienne
Rich. My own interest in the “form” lies in the freedom it allows --
the escape, even, from brief lyric “unity”. These are not, I think,
surrealist, free-association poems. They are poems of careful
construction; but of a construction permitting the greatest controlled
imaginative progression. . . .
The ghazal allows the imagination to move by its own nature:
discovering an alien design, illogical and without sense -- a chart of
the disorderly, against false reason and the tacking together of poor
narratives. It is the poem of contrasts, dreams, astonishing leaps. The
ghazal has been called “drunken and amatory” and I think it is.
Thus Thompson, & I have always found his take useful to the writer
writing (in english)...
Doug
On 7-Feb-05, at 12:11 AM, Rebecca Seiferle wrote:
> Thanks, Richard, for prompting an interesting discussion and I'm glad
> you
> mentioned Agha Shahid Ali who was probably the most noted contemporary
> poet writing ghazals in English.
>
>> But basically, the form is this in terms of rhyme
>> scheme, which is about all that can be carried over into English
>> anyway
>
> I do wonder at this. I thought the formal conventions of the ghazal
> were that it
> be of 5-12, extended in some definitions to 5-15 couplets, and that
> each
> couplet was meant to be a kind of poem in itself and that the lines
> were to have
> the same rhythm? You have described the rhyme scheme, the first
> couplet
> should rhyme and from then on the second line of each couplet rhymes
> with the
> first and also that the signature of the poet is in the last couplet.
> But I wonder
> why you feel that the rhyme scheme is 'about all that can be carried
> over" into
> English? Couldn't the sense of each couplet as a kind of poem in
> itself and the
> lines having the same rhythm also be attempted in English with at
> least an equal
> likelihood of success?
>
>> In fact, the only form that I know of in
>> English that makes use of perfect rhyme, though in a very different
>> way, is
>> the sestina, and there the order of the words is varied from stanza to
>> stanza so that the repetition of the words does not grate on the ear
>
> Well, I have already posted my question about rhyme. I think rhyme is
> the same
> sound heard in different words. The sestina basically uses repetition
> of the
> same six end words in an order which shifts from stanza to stanza
> according to
> a fixed pattern. It's a recurrent pattern. But I don't think it's
> strictly speaking
> "rhyme" or "perfect rhyme". I was puzzled about the use of rhyme in
> this
> conversation because the examples given seemed to me to be examples of
> repetition not rhyme. And while that may seem a small detail,
> repetition is a
> different element, an often important one, in various ways in English
> poems,
> and so it might be useful to look at the risks and gifts of repetition
> in English
> poetry and more apropos than rhyme.
>
> And again thanks,
>
> Rebecca
> ---- Original message ----
>> Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 21:20:00 -0500
>> From: Richard Jeffrey Newman <[log in to unmask]>
>> Subject: Re: Translation and the ghazal
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>> Alison wrote:
>>
>>>> The question of preserving formalities in translation fascinates me
>>>> as an
>> impossible problem.<<
>>
>> It is an impossible problem, but the more I work at translation, and
>> the
>> more I think about my own decisions, the more I am convinced it is a
>> problem
>> that cannot be ignored or simply dismissed because of its
>> impossibility. I
>> wish I had the Agha Shahid Ali book here with me because he gives a
>> wonderfully succinct explanation of the ghazal form, and I believe is
>> the
>> Persian version of the form he is talking about. The Urdu version has
>> slightly different rules. But basically, the form is this in terms of
>> rhyme
>> scheme, which is about all that can be carried over into English
>> anyway: the
>> first couplet announces the rhyme; each line in the couplet ends with
>> exactly the same rhyme. Then, the second line of every succeeding
>> couplet
>> reproduces that rhyme exactly. This is why you get the repetition in
>> the two
>> translations I posted, though the repetition is not, as Mark wrote,
>> limited
>> to the last word. In the Gray translation of Hafez, it is actually
>> the last
>> three syllables that are repeated--"and she left"--and in Anvar's
>> translation of Rumi, it is the last four, "begin to dance." (In the
>> ghazal,
>> one of the challenges is to see how many syllables you can make the
>> rhyme
>> out of.) This kind of perfect rhyme violates every principle of rhyme
>> I was
>> ever taught about writing formal poetry in English, where precise
>> repetition
>> is generally not a good thing. In fact, the only form that I know of
>> in
>> English that makes use of perfect rhyme, though in a very different
>> way, is
>> the sestina, and there the order of the words is varied from stanza to
>> stanza so that the repetition of the words does not grate on the
>> ear--plus
>> you have the intervening lines between an end word in one stanza and
>> the
>> same word in the subsequent stanzas. And as I said in one of my
>> earlier
>> posts, there are connections between the ghazal and the villanelle.
>>
>> Mark wonders how this repetition Persianizes the English. It
>> certainly does
>> not do so in terms of syntax or imagery or anything like that, but I
>> would
>> argue that, to the degree this kind of repetition/perfect rhyme is
>> foreign
>> to English, working it into a poem is in fact a kind of
>> "foreignization." (I
>> imagine the same thing was true of the sonnet or any of the other
>> Romance
>> language verse forms when they were first introduced into English.)
>> At the
>> very least it increases the formal possibilities of English. I will
>> also say
>> that when I first read these translations, before I understood the
>> point of
>> the form, and even when I read Agha Shahid Ali's English ghazals, the
>> repetition grated on my ears, and it took me a while before I could
>> hear the
>> music and the poetry in it.
>>
>> I would also agree that the Campo ghazal is not entirely successful,
>> either
>> as a poem or a formal exercise, though I also don't find it
>> "ghastly." There
>> are a couple of reasons for this, I think. First, instead of limiting
>> himself to rhyming the second line of each couplet with the rhyme
>> announced
>> in the first couplet, he makes each couplet rhyming, and that is
>> overkill;
>> it struck me that he was trying to show off. More than that, though,
>> I think
>> that the repetition of the word "all" does not work because, instead
>> of
>> writing discrete couplets, as, for example, the Rumi translation is
>> made up
>> of, he ties all the couplets together into a single narrative, and so
>> the
>> repetition, rather than building in power and significance--which is
>> the
>> intent in the translations, whether you think it works or not--become
>> intrusive and distracting, highlighting the word "all" in ways that
>> do not
>> necessarily contribute anything. Nonetheless, I think the poem is
>> interesting for what it tries to do formally, and I think there is
>> something
>> to learn from the way it fails.
>>
>> I tried my hand at the ghazal form, and I would like to try it again,
>> once
>> I've made a more careful study of it. It's fun and it's challenging
>> and it's
>> often very frustrating. Finding a rhyme that will work within this
>> form in
>> English is not easy. This is a draft that I have done no additional
>> work on,
>> so I make no claims for it as anything other than an interesting
>> formal
>> experiment. I do think it works formally in ways that Campo's does
>> not, but
>> I think it is also far less ambitious in content. (One more note
>> about the
>> form. The poet usually uses his own name in the final couplet of the
>> poem.
>> Also, the way the last line repeats the first line has nothing to do
>> with
>> the ghazal form; it was just my way of ending this poem.)
>>
>> Ghazal: A Dream
>>
>> A woman I desire desires me.
>> I know it's true. This thought inspires me.
>>
>> I'm standing naked in the rain. The sun
>> is waiting. So am I. Waiting tires me.
>>
>> Last night, I dreamed a poet writing lines
>> I'd love to claim as mine. He admires me
>>
>> because I don't, but it's his bat in my hands.
>> The man who throws the ball retires me,
>>
>> which means I'm looking for another job,
>> which means I'm looking for what fires me,
>>
>> gives me final form before I'm glazed
>> and put out on the shelf. No one acquires me.
>>
>> The shelf is not as lonely as I thought.
>> Sunlight through the window sires me.
>>
>> In the dream, my son discovered my affair
>> with song, destroyed my hidden lyres. Me?
>>
>> I'm here now, a happy and complete Richard:
>> a woman I desire desires me.
>
>
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 Canada
(780) 436 3320
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
Reserved books. Reserved land. Reserved flight.
And still property is theft.
Phyllis Webb
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