CROSS POST: new form every day... Ghazal (day 41 of 365 poems in 365 days) - 2011-02-10 09:50

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THE DISCOMFORT OF DISCONNECTION

there is a deepening despondency
with the company of love's cessation.

time is fraught with horror of dejection
and sorrow throughout parting's duration.

bitterness perhaps fought with alcohol
taken in the hopes of sweet sedation.

there is memory of fits of delight
replaced now with an aching sensation.

with the missing then comes the hollowness
of complete emotional starvation.

fighting these flights of fanciful dreaming
somehow leading only to stagnation.

but even in these darkened times of woe
there is cause for hope and pure elation.

the knowing that this to shall someday pass
leads to finding of a new salvation.



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From: http://www.thepoetsgarret.com/list.html





Ghazal

From: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(I suggest reading the full article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghazal for much more details)

The ghazal is a poetic form consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain, with each line sharing the same meter. A ghazal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain. The form is ancient, originating in 6th century Arabic verse. It is derived from the Arabian panegyric qasida. The structural requirements of the ghazal are similar in stringency to those of the Petrarchan sonnet. In its style and content it is a genre which has proved capable of an extraordinary variety of expression around its central themes of love and separation. It is one of the principal poetic forms which the Indo-Perso-Arabic civilization offered to the eastern Islamic world.

MY SUMMARY ON FORM REQUIREMENTS:
* composed of five or more couplets
* a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain.
(usually illicit unattainable love?)
* In the first couplet, both lines end in the rhyme and refrain so that the ghazal's rhyme scheme is AA BA CA etc
* Each couplet must be a complete sentence (or several sentences) in itself.
* All the couplets, and each line of each couplet, must share the same meter.



PERSONAL NOTE ON THE PROCESS...
"A ghazal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain."

I can definitely get the pain of separation/loss part... the beauty of love in spite of, I haven't felt beautiful about separation since 2005-2006... Plus the requirement of the form? Yeah, this took a lot of researching to get the feel of what I was going to write.

I noticed in the ghazals written by English speakers, there was only the rhyme and not necessarily a refrain word or phrase. Plus in Wikipedia it did say not all ghazal forms (great, forms within a form) used the refrain, so that freed up my mind a little. I'll try to challenge myself to do a refrain later.



The rhyming is still the same for me. I use a single word for my main theme and then rhyming dictionary it into oblivion to figure out how to say what I want and still emote while at the same time fitting into the meter and rhyme of the form.So I decided on a theme of separation (without actually using the word in the poem) and a pentameter rhythm (NOT iambic, I hate that rhythm! :-P). I did a few more than the minimum 5 couplets. Challenge was to have each couplet be a complete sentence or sentences. I am still not so keen on rhyming and using meter because it feels so nursery rhyme like and is not the natural way I think these days... but... I did it and I hope it doesn't suck! :-P



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