Tag Archives: The Ghazal Page

Ghazals for the Stars

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The astronomy ghazal challenge is completed: ??The issue presenting the results is now online. You may go directly to the index page for the challenge or go to the main page and follow links from there.

If you have comments or responses to the astronomy issue or other aspects of The Ghazal Page, you may post them as comments on this blog.

There is also a new challenge, with "change" as the theme. I look forward to seeing the ghazals you write in response to the challenge. (Be sure to read the instructions carefully.) The challenges have produced some of the best ghazals published in TGP. 

The next issue will be published around 21 March; the deadline for the new challenge is 30 June. These dates reflect the new publishing schedule: quarterly issues and two challenges a year.

Changes for The Ghazal Page

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In an earlier post, I announced that The Ghazal Page will be published quarterly, starting with the fall issue next month.

Another change is the addition of several contributing editors. The seven people who have agreed to be contributing editors have already made substantial contributions to the 'zine, and we may expect more. A contributing editor is someone who has demonstrated consistency in quality of contributions and helpfulness in interaction with the editor. A contributing editor does not have editorial responsibiltiy. The title recognizes the person's earlier contributions and encourages more.

These contributing editors will be joined by others.

The main page now lists Rose Doty as assistant editor. Rose has been functioning as an assistant for a long time, providing insight, suggestions, and very accurate copy editing as well. I thought it was time to recognize her contributions. (If you don't know, Rose is my wife.)

The Ghazal Page is, of course, always open to contributions of ghazals and related prose and ideas for challenges or special issues.

March Issue of The Ghazal Page

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The March issue of The Ghazal Page is freshly online. I hope you'll read and appreciate the five ghazals there, under the title "from American Amnesiac: A History in Ghazals, by Diane Raptosh. While these poems depart in some significant ways from the Persian/Urdu form, they use the ghazal approach effectively to narrate an experience of amnesia and raise questions about identity.

Raptosh especially departs from the Persian/Urdu form by enjambment of lines and couplets, sometimes radically. The Arabic ghazal does, of course, enjamb lines. Raptosh's departures from the "orthodox" form give her ghazals a strong flavor of twentieth century verse and reinforce the themes of loss and searching in the poems themselves.

A text that confronts or confounds one's expectations can be richer in meaning than a completely predictable poem. A basic purpose of The Ghazal Page is exploring the possibilities of the ghazal as a poem in English in the 21st century. While The Ghazal Page itself is not set up to facilitate discussion, I do invite comments and responses here on Gino's Ghazal Blog, so please feel invited!

Color Radif Issue Published

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Early last fall, I issued a challenge on The Ghazal Page: to write ghazals with color words as the radif. The responses were very effective and varied ghazals. The special issue of these results is now officially published. The twenty-six ghazals are divided into five groups, with one ghazal, "Rainbow Ghazal," by Elaine G. Schwartz, as a proem for the whole issue. It was harder to name the groups in this challenge than in the earlier stone, sugar, or clouds and rain challenges. In the end, I used mixed categories: Motley, The Blues, Mixed Greens, Heat, and B & W. The label for each group fits it well, I think.

While most of the ghazals use a single color word as the radif, which is what I expected, some use several color words related to an over-arching idea. Perhaps the most unusual/unexpected category is B & W. There are six ghazals in this category, three dealing with "black" and three with "white." To be technical, neither black nor white is a color, black absorbing all visible wave-lengths and white reflecting all of them. One poet even asked about white being considered a color. These six ghazals definitely belong in this issue, and, while they're monochrome, they do add needed color to it.

The next issue is for January of 2010, only ten days away. I expect that issue to be a little late: I'm redesigning the main page for 2010, with substantial changes in layout, and am also creating the design for the 2010 issues.  If there is any delay, I trust that the 2010 debut will be worth the wait.

The November Issue of The Ghazal Page

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The November issue of The Ghazal Page is now online. It has six fine ghazals by five effective poets. While the issue isn't exactly seasonal, there is a kind of sobriety or starkness about these ghazals, or about some aspects of them, that seems appropriate.

Where I live, we've had a lot of rain, with the danger of flash floods and the streets of one small river-front town flooding. Waking after midnight to the roll of thunder is pleasurable to me, but the rain seems more than sufficient. The general trend of the daily temperatures is downwards. One morning soon, I'll go out to the car and find I have to scrape ice off the windshield before I can drive it. The ghazals in this issue feel appropriate to this season. I hope that you enjoy them.