What was I thinking when I challenged my Inklings writing group to write a ghazal for this month’s challenge? Woah, who knew there were so many rules/ guidelines? I had attended the Poetry Foundation’s Summer Teachers Institute and watched a presentation about using repetition in poetry. The presenter talked about two poetry forms, the villanelle and the ghazal. So I said to myself that in order to teach these forms, I needed to write in these forms.
The ghazal is an ancient Arabic and Persian language poetic form. It has couplets (two-line stanzas) that end with repeated end words or phrases. You can also add that traditionally the author’s name appears in the last couplet.
Looks easy, right? Well, this definition was somewhat incomplete. At Poets.org, there is this more complete definition. And Molly directed us to this guidance on Tweetspeak. The most help, as always, came from the Inkling group’s dedication to the craft of poetry and to each other. Their critique was invaluable.
I wanted my poem to say something, to express my longing as a grandmother for the grandmother I never knew. This portrait of her was painted in the 1940’s when my mother was a young girl. It now hangs in my dining room, life-size.
Grandmother’s Song
She never held me in her arms long to sing.
Death took her breath–she was not wrong to sing.Within her eyes a lullaby still stares
from a frame to invite me along to sing.Her portrait-hands caress violin strings;
Like the songbird’s voice, they echo strong to sing.Now I wonder if an angel sings to me.
I want to know whose song to sing.I have her name–Margaret–a spelling tune,
Margaret Simon, ghazal, all rights reserved.
like a young child, I know I belong to sing.
Click on the links to read more ghazals by our amazing poetry group.
Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
Molly Hogan at Nix the Comfort Zone
Mary Lee Hahn at A(nother) Year of Reading
Reflections on the Teche 