So What's a Ghazal?

The ghazal (pronounced "ghuzzle")is a lyric poem consisting of thematically autonomous couplets, unified by rhyme and meter. Although it is a 1300 year-old pre-Islamic Persian form, its non-linear format anticipates contemporary post-modern poetic sensibilities.
The ghazal was introduced to American pop-culture in the1960s through hippie arts and the craze for Indian music and poetry. It subsequently found limited popularity among mid-20th Century poets (e.g., USA: Adrienne Rich, Robert Bly, John Hollander, Galway Kinnell, Dana Goia, Jim Harrison, John Drury, Gene Doty; Canada: John Thompson, Phyllis Webb, Tony Cozier, Eric Folsom), although Garcia-Lorca had written a few ghazals in Spanish in the early '30s.

American poets renewed their interest in the ghazal in the late 1980s-90s under the tutelage of professor Agha Shahid Ali, who introduced traditional discipline and insight into to the English-speaking form.

Major Historical Poets

Persian: Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273)
Urdu: Mirza Asadulla Khan (Ghalib)(1797-1869) and Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1910-1984)
Farsi: Maher Baba Hafiz (1325 - 1389)
Kashmiri: Habba Khatun (16th Century) and Zinda Kaul (1884-1966

The Form

SHER: An odd number of independent couplets (shers), five or more, each of which is complete by itself and autonomous. This is the most consistently (often the only) rule followed in modern English-language ghazals.
BEHER: Metric consistency, or counted syllabics. There are 19 beher in Urdu, but they can be classified as long, medium and short. The lines of each sher should be of equal beher or length.
RADIF: The second end word of each sher should repeat according to the scheme:
aa, ba, ca, da, ea, etc.
KHAAFIYAA: Internal rhyme in each line of the first couplet, and in the last line of each couplet In Urdu, this is the most rigid rule, yet is often ignored in English.
MAHKTA: An optional mahkta or signature final couplet, where the poet's name is used in the second or third person. This is often used retorically, as if the poet was talking to him/herself. Many traditional ghazal poets (shayar) used pen names here. Mirza Asadulla Khan was known as "Ghalib."

For a complete exposition of these rules see: Agha Shahid Ali. "Transparently Invisible: An Invitation from the Real Ghazal," Poetry Pilot, The Newsletter of the Academy of American Poets

Further Reading in English

Agha Shahid Ali. The Rebel's Silhouette, translations from the Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Peregrine Press, 1991. (Includes traditional format ghazals translated without rhyme or couplet format.)

Agha Shahid Ali. "Transparently Invisible: An Invitation from the Real Ghazal," Poetry Pilot, The Newsletter of the Academy of American Poets. (A thorough description of the form and its history.)

Agha Shahid Ali (ed.). Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English, Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 2000. (Best collection of English-language ghazals, edited by the then current master of the form.)

Galway Kinnell. Imperfect Thirst. Houghton Mifflin Co., 1994. (The ghazal very loosely interpreted.)

Adrienne Rich. "Homage to Ghalib" from The Fact of a Doorframe. W. W. Norton & Co., 1984, pp 104-109. (A series of free-verse couplets which, although not entirely traditional in form, capture the non-linear, miniature/cameo impression of the original. These poems shimmer with music and mystery.)

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The ghazal, a 1300-year-old lyric poetic form, has been introducted into contemporary American poetiy through the work of Agha Shahid Ali, Adrienne Rich, Robert Bly, Galway Kinnell, and others. This site offers examples, explanations, a brief history and links to other ghazal sites.

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Last updated 3/2007

The ghazal is often sung as a raga, accompanied by classical Indian instruments. It is popular in India, Pakistan, the Urdu-speaking Middle East and Islamic Northeastern Africa, where huge, boisterous audiences gather to hear their favorite performers recite and/or sing. The ghazal has been taken very seriously as a medium of political protest. Several notable 20th Century Urdu-speaking poets were imprisoned on the South Asian Subcontinent before its emancipation and partition in the 1940's and '50's. Consider this couplet (sher)from an elegy for the Rosenbergs by Faiz Ahmed Faiz:

It's true-- that not to reach you was fate -- but who'll deny that to love you was entirely in my hands?
So why complain if these matters of desire brought me inevitably to the execution grounds?

-- Lines 18 - 22, "We Who Were Executed," Rebel's Silhouette

by, Billie Dee