Well, if I may ask a dumb question, what is the definition of "rhyme"? I've always
thought of it as the same sound heard in two different words, the effect of
which Paz described as a "copulation of sounds." Is repeating the same word
rhyme? or is it just repetition? I went and looked up various things including my
falling apart Princeton Encyclopedia of Poets and under "Persian Poetry" there
are a few lines by Rumi:

bishnav az nai chun hikayat mikunad
az judayiha shikayat mikunad
kaz nayistanm ta mara bibrida and
az nafirma mard u zan nalida and

Sorry I can't do the accentuals in email but in the first line there's a long mark
over the 'u' in chun and the first 'a' in hikayat and the 'i' in mikunad, and in the
second over both 'a's and the 'i' in judayiha and over the first 'a' in shikayat and
the 'i' in mikunad. While I don't know how to pronounce this, I'd guess that while
"mikunad' is the same word ending both the first and second lines that "hikayat"
and "shikayat" rhyme. Similarly in the third and fourth lines, there appears to be
a rhyme of bibrida and nalida at least in the long 'i' of each combining with the
repetitive 'and'. This goes back to Richard's comment that the rhyme in such
poetry was not merely of the last word but the phrase, or several words, ending
the line.  This would suggest to me that this is rhyme of phrases, a similar
sound heard in different words ending with the repetition of a word? But in
these English ghazals, whether the translations or Campo's, there's only
repetition of a phrase or repetition of a word. So it's not really introducing a
newness of rhyme to English poetry is it? so much as introducing a degree of
repetition. And that seems to me to not be a particularly enchanting affect, the
repetition of 'all' in Campo's poem, the "begin to dance" "and then she left." The
repetition of phrases is, I'd guess, more congenial to the ear in English poetry,
accustomed perhaps to the ballad's and, for that matter, the popular song's use
of the refrain but even there the correspondence might be open to question.
What does it do to translate a Persian poem into an English where the
repetitions may be associated with particular forms, the ballad, the popular
song, along with the various cultural weights? Anyway someone let me know if I
am incorrect, these translations and the Campo poem seem to me to be using
extended repetition, not 'rhyme', just repeating a word or a phrase at the end of
various lines, rather than hearing the same sound in different words which is
what I think of as rhyme in English and which also seems to be, as near as I can
tell, rhyme in Persian poetry (though there with repetition included, but not the
only element).

Best,

Rebecca
---- Original message ----
>Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 23:38:59 -0500
>From: Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]>  
>Subject: Re: Translation and the ghazal  
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>Richard says he's going to translate into blank verse. That too will
>probably constrain his decisions, tho less than full-scale replication of
>the original's formal patterning. It's possible to suggest the original
>form without the constraints of replication. That's the route I usually
>prefer. But if one could produce a result as natural in English as the
>original is in the source language while maintaining the formal pattern,
>why not? I just don't think it's very often likely.
>
>Note that we've been privileging rhyme in this discussion, but that's
>usually only a part of the original's pattern. Why not try to replicate
>meter as well as rhyme, even when the meter isn't common in English? Hey,
>why not just use the same words? Is there a line somewhere? Or how about
>translating a Spanish sonnet, for instance, into an English sonnet--what do
>you do about meter? Spanish sonnets are unmetered--it's just a ten syllable
>count per line and make it sing nicely. Would that seem a reasonable
>solution in the translation--an abbaabbacdecde rhyme scheme, but no
>recurring meter? I think it would read as a mistake, but if the reader
>decides he can dispense with the expected iambic pentameter, why not the
>rhyme? Lots of assonances can convey some of the feel of the original.
>
>In translating onetries, it seems to me, to translate not only from one
>language to another but from one culture and epoch to another. It's an
>interesting balance--one doesn't want to suggest that this can actually be
>accomplished, so one maintains a little strangeness, but one also wants by
>and large to translate what would have been everyday diction into everyday
>diction, and the ornate into the ornate.
>
>A year or so ago Jan Clausen published a book of love poems by Sor Juana de
>la Cruz, the great Mexican Baroque poet, the ancestress of all subsequent
>post-conquest poetry. The fun of the originals is their extraordinary
>command of baroque tropes and grammatical play. Clausen stripped all that
>away. In American plain speech there was nothing left. The lack of rhyme
>was in comparison trivial.
>
>There are of course poems that make no sense without their rhyme and may in
>fact be untranslateable for that reason alone. I'm thinking of nursery
>rhymes. There are also poems that are simply untranslateable. I recently
>had to select some of my own for translation into Spanish. The selection
>was limited by the bounds of possibility--a poem built on word associations
>couldn't conceivably be made to cross over, nor could one built entirely of
>puns. So it goes--some things will remain available only to those who read
>the source language.
>
>As to the Campo, your tolerance of it bewilders me--almost every rhyme word
>is forced into position merely to maintain the rhyme. I'll stay with ghastly.
>
>Mark
>