rain ghazal

[gollum]

more poetry for class; this one's a ghazal. -g.

rain ghazal

i had a dream that i flew in the rain,
looked through a window at you in the rain.

you say "everything is a dream, dear,
nothing is ever as true in the rain."

you are the enemy. you are my fears.
you become crystal turned blue in the rain.

tell me the sky is not falling. tell me.
whisper your false secrets into the rain.

every tear that falls, each drop of glass-
they bring me to my knees, soothing the rain.

your promises fall, hammering the earth,
the ground which opens herself to the rain.

when you leave, take your treachery, and tell
the world i left you to mourn in the rain.

[This message has been edited by gollum (edited September 24, 2001).]

[Oz]

hmmmmmmm...interesting. i think i like it. must re read.

is a ghazal something where its two lines and every second line ends with the same word? ive never heard of this kinda format... id be interested also in taking a class of the same sorta nature, g. sounds cool.

[gollum]

there are parts of it i don't like (some because they don't work well with the strict ghazal format, which i was trying to go with) and it sounds a little too singsongy to me, but other than that i like this one.

ghazal (pronounced "guzzle"):
1. A ghazal is a poem of 5 to 12 couplets.
2.it contains no enjambments (phrases interrupted in the midst of a line, basically) between couplets. Think of each couplet as a separate poem. one must have a sense that line 2 is amplifying line 1, turning things around, surprising us.
3.what links these couplets is a strict formal sceme. this is how it works: the entire ghazal employs the SAME rhyme plus a refrain. THE RHYME MUST IMMEDIATELY PRECEDE THE REFRAIN. if the rhyme is merely buried somewhere in the line, that will have its charm, of course, but it would not lead ot the wonderful pleasure of IMMEDIATE recognition which is central to the ghazal.
4. each line must be of the same length (inclusive of the rhyme and refrain. establish some system--metrical or syllabic--for maintaining consistency in line lengths.
5.the last couplet may be (and usually is) a signature couplet in which the poet may invoke his/her name in the first, second, or third person.
6.the scheme of rhyme and refrain occurs in BOTH lines of the first couplet (that is how one learns what the scheme is) and then ONLY in the second line of every succeeding couplet (that is, the first line of every succeeding couplet may be anything as long as it maintains the syllabic or metrical length).
7.there is an epigrammatic terseness in the ghazal, but with immense lyricism, evocation, sorrow, heartbreak, wit. What defines the ghazal is a constant longing.

(whoops)

that's sort of a condensed version of a handout our prof gave us, written by a guy (someone Shahid someone) whose name i didn't write down in class--he's a really famous ghazal writer.

hope that helps, Oz. they're actually not as hard as they look (although doing one *well*, like any poem, is hard).

-g

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Pray for the dead, but fight like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones-

[dwim]

thank you gollum... i'll be sure to try one out and post the resulting piece...

[Ersby]

It's an Indian form of poetry, I believe. An artist called Najma did an album of ghazals called Qareeb which I strongly recommend, if you can hold of it.

Interesting poem.

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[Oz]

that seems SOOO hard.