PoBo Form Master Class Series - The Ghazal

[champagne1982]

Bumpin' ghazals for the adventurous...

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Tonight I speak my thoughts

Tonight I speak my thoughts saving nothing at all in the dark.
Weightless and denied now I can hear others call in the dark.

There’s flowers and corpses of shriveled thoughts discarded.
And I wanted to shout “I’m just your punching ball after dark.”

Offering sweet tea and sandesh, singing love songs as overtures.
Not only children weep, diminished in stature, small after dark.

Each word chosen with care, strung fragile, dew on gossamer.
I wait with you, white nothingness holding our thrall after dark -

to touch that place, vulnerable and open, you have offered before
empty and echoing throbbing memories – a concert hall after dark.

Melted ice will find a river and my arms will be your tributary
So let me hold you in those yearning arms once and for all after dark.


My one and only........

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Tonight I speak my thoughts saving nothing at all in the dark.
Weightless and denied now I can hear others call in the dark.

There’s flowers and corpses of shriveled thoughts discarded.
And I wanted to shout “I’m just your punching ball after dark.”

Offering sweet tea and sandesh, singing love songs as overtures.
Not only children weep, diminished in stature, small after dark.

Each word chosen with care, strung fragile, dew on gossamer.
I wait with you, white nothingness holding our thrall after dark -

to touch that place, vulnerable and open, you have offered before
empty and echoing throbbing memories – a concert hall after dark.

Melted ice will find a river and my arms will be your tributary
So let me hold you in those yearning arms once and for all after dark.


My one and only........

I recognise a trigger in there!

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

I recognise a trigger in there!

Busted - I admit it, I was forced to write the damn Ghazel!

But I love reading them - one of my favourite poets, Lorna Crozier, has a book devoted to them - "Bones in their Wings". Her's are looser in form but really lovely. Each two lines is an image, a stoy, in its self

 

[butters]

some serene poems here and i've barely scratched the surface.

i'm getting line length/the couplets/rep of refrain/separate mini-poems within the one and how each second line is supposed to build or examine further the first's sentiments ... i get that ... but i'm not getting where exactly where the rhyming is meant to occur apart from the repped refrain (obviously)

someone help me out, pls, in simple terms? never written a ghazal before but would like to give it a try sometime.

 

[butters]

ah! this example shows me what i think i need to know. i didn't read that far before (shame on me)

I was floating on a river last night
in a dream in a green park from my youth

Nothing stays the same, even when I sleep
with the stream of my memories of youth

Today the world is older, more corrupt
I'm seamless, my spirit's the same, my youth

Here dwells the ageless canon where I sat
years past the teeming city of my youth

I still can smell the mud at water's edge
The beam of autumn's prism seals my youth.

 

[EroticOrogeny]

ah! this example shows me what i think i need to know. i didn't read that far before (shame on me)

Some say their should be end rhyme in the first couplet.
Ghazal
This is also what we used in the 2009 Poetry Survivor. (form E)
You can also page thru the 2009 scoresheets by UYS, myself and a few others, along with Tess'es.

 

[Palba_Noruda]

Jim Harrison published a book of ghazals, and I remember reading a section of ghazals in another one of his poetry collections several years ago. I will have to look for it next time I'm at the library, I think that's where I got it

Here's some more on the ghazal. Evidently there is some debate on English Ghazal versus Persian Ghazal. Of course. Like Kerouac's American Haikus.

http://www.ahapoetry.com/GHAZAL.HTM

 

[butters]

Some say their should be end rhyme in the first couplet.
Ghazal
This is also what we used in the 2009 Poetry Survivor. (form E)
You can also page thru the 2009 scoresheets by UYS, myself and a few others, along with Tess'es.

ah, yes,. i did see that with the opening ghazals, how the first two lines both bore the refrain or at least the last one or two words. i'll have a look soon. thanks!

Jim Harrison published a book of ghazals, and I remember reading a section of ghazals in another one of his poetry collections several years ago. I will have to look for it next time I'm at the library, I think that's where I got it

Here's some more on the ghazal. Evidently there is some debate on English Ghazal versus Persian Ghazal. Of course. Like Kerouac's American Haikus.

http://www.ahapoetry.com/GHAZAL.HTM

lol, isn't there always? so many forms, so many adaptations ... .
thanks for the link Pabs.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

some serene poems here and i've barely scratched the surface.

i'm getting line length/the couplets/rep of refrain/separate mini-poems within the one and how each second line is supposed to build or examine further the first's sentiments ... i get that ... but i'm not getting where exactly where the rhyming is meant to occur apart from the repped refrain (obviously)

someone help me out, pls, in simple terms? never written a ghazal before but would like to give it a try sometime.

If you read back in this thread Lady spelt it out for me when I was fumbling in the dark