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.