Ghuzal, qasida, and musaddas oh my!

Today we’re looking at the ghazal form. It’s pronounced “ghuzzle” and originated in Persia, the Iran, formerly India, area. It’s a form of poetry over a thousand years old and that’s just cool. The ghazal has rules, as does form poetry, as opposed to free verse. It’s written in couplets, and couplets mean rhyme so break out the rhyming dictionary. There are five to fifteen couplets per poem. The lines must have the same rhythm (don’t confuse that with rhyme) and the couplet end-rhyme is very specific. The first couplet has the same end-rhyme. So:

Axie had a Little Sheep.
Little Sheep took a leap.

That’s the first couplet. In the second couplet, the second line rhymes with the first couplet. So:

Little Sheep looked and hopped and jumped all day
Axie seized a crook and on the sheep began to creep.

Shoot me, this is straight off the top of my head.)

The refrain is repeated in the second line throughout the poem. The last couplet can contain a poet’s signature, or a line connecting them to the poem somehow. Not all have these, but kinda cool when they do. Check out poets.org for more on the ghazal and look for an example there also. There’s also the Ghazal Page, a webzine devoted to the ghazal form in English.

Related to the ghazal, are three additional forms, the qasida, the musaddas, and zejele. They all belong to the family of Urdu poetry, something vaguely Arabic, Persian, and Pakistani in origin. I’m just learning about it myself so this is by no means an extensive list. It’s a crash course for me in non-Western poetic forms. So here we go.

The qasida is Arabic and consists of couplets, up to a hundred couplets, with the same rhyme. So the rhyme scheme is aa aa aa etc. Pretty boring, but to each their own. Wikipedia has links to prolific 12th century poets who mastered this form. Go there for a list and links to their work.

The musaddas has some disagreement surrounding the form. Arabic in origin, some say the the musaddas has three feet in a line, a light syllable an optional addition. Others call for a six-line stanzaic form with an aaaabb rhyme scheme. Another version uses a ghazal rhyme scheme through the final couplet making an aa ba ca da ea fa ga ha ii rhyme scheme. Use whichever one you want, combine them, make the form your own. I couldn’t find any examples of a masadda in my quick search, but I’m sure they’re out there.

The last related form to the ghazal is the zéjele. According to PoetryBase, it showed up in Moorish Spain sometime in the tenth century. This was a zenith in terms of Spanish-Moorish history. Culture was at an all time high there while China faced serious political upheaval and Europe, always a backwater culturally speaking, entered the early days of the dark ages. The zéjel holds the equivalent of a limerick. The content is meant to be light. Eight syllable lines are typical, but longer or shorter is perfectly acceptable. Verses, likewise, can be any length. The rhyme follows an aa bbba ccca ddda etc pattern with an eight syllable meter, though, again, guideline for this form more than a rule.

For more on Urdu poetry, try Wikipedia Or Urdu Poetry.com

Happy ghuzzeling! :p Or qasida-ing or zejele-ing…

Easter Weekend Prompt

Nightsong, a prayer meant to be said at midnight. It’s related to a blessing, a canticle, charm, evensong, liturgic, morningsong, or just a general prayer, at least according to PoetryBase/PoetryGnosis. Mostly morningsongs, evensongs, and nightsongs are religious forms, and yours can be too. It’s usually formal, but for this exercise, that’s not mandatory. It’s usually Christian, but even that’s not mandatory. I’m not Christian strictly or even really loosely speaking, but the bare bones of the religion has some validity and I’ll utilize anything if it makes sense. So a nightsong, as far as I can tell, if a form of prayer used to focus your thoughts, a meditation of sorts. Ask yourself where your life is headed, what does your life mean to you, what are you doing with it, what are you sorry for, happy about, grateful for, etc. What are the positive factors in your life and what are the negative and how can you manage them?

This exercise doesn’t have to be as serious as all that. Let’s have some fun with it. I appreciate cows. They make me smile, they make me happy, and they give my life purpose. They also provide me with a steady paycheck. So if I could write a nightsong poem praising the cow gods for their generosity. (Horses and sheep have gods too, I just don’t hang with them as often :p) But find your own topic, religious or otherwise. If you’re a pagan, make it a song to nature or whatever god or goddess presides over that time of day. If you’re of another religion, tailor it to your god or gods. If your agnostic or atheist, use it to give homage to whatever you feel is worthy of praise.

No matter what your religion, we all appreciate something in life. Praise it, as you would getting up, going to bed, and at midnight. After all, what goes around comes around and the energy you put out into the world rebounds on you. Why not put out something positive? It might be amazing what you get back.

Nursery Rhymes

Nursery rhymes, you say. That’s poetry? Yup, I say and it’s usually the first poems any of us learn. But like fairy tales, nursery rhymes can have interesting origins, but seem to lack the violent imagery common to fairy tales.

Take this for example:

“Little Bo Peep Story”
Little Bo peep has lost her sheep
And doesn't know where to find them.
Leave them alone and they'll come home,
Bringing their tails behind them.
Little Bo peep fell fast asleep
And dreamt she heard them bleating,
But when she awoke, she found it a joke,
For they were all still fleeting.
Then up she took her little crook
Determined for to find them.
She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed,
For they left their tails behind them.
It happened one day, as Bo peep did stray
Into a meadow hard by,
There she espied their tails side by side
All hung on a tree to dry.
She heaved a sigh, and wiped her eye,
And over the hillocks went rambling,
And tried what she could,
As a shepherdess should,
To tack again each to its lambkin.
From: Nursery Rhymes www.rhymes.org.uk/little_bo_peep.htm

Check out www.rhymes.org.uk for more nursery rhymes.

Also RhymeZone www.rhymezone.com is a very cool rhyming site

www.gigglepoetry.com/poetryclassdetail.aspx?LessonPlanID=15 has hints for rewriting Mary Had A Little Lamb and writing nursery rhymes in general.

www.gigglepoetry.com/poetryclassdetail.aspx?LessonPlanID=39 And if you’re still wondering, what is a poem, check out this link.

Poetry Month Kickoff

What is a poem? Why poetry? I’m metrically challenged, what about me? Poetry never makes any sense, how am I supposed to understand it?

I majored in English and took more than a few poetry classes and I still bitch about this shit.

I’d like to preface this by saying that I am not a poet.

Period.

But I do write poetry.

So what is poetry to a non-poet? Unlike verse, a poem is more plastic, more like song lyrics (which is a type of poem, by the way) so each time you come to a poem or song, the meaning might have subtly changed based on what you bring into the experience. The same occurs with novels too, thought to a lesser degree, at least in my experience.

I’m not here to make you like poetry. I hate it myself, on most occasions. But as a writer, I recognize its uses. Like flash fiction or the short story, it’s a form to understand and respect. A writer can sprawl out in a novel, kind of like in marriage. You can let everything hang out and evoke strong emotions, positive and negative. You can evoke strong emotions in other forms as well; you just have to be briefer on a one-night stand. To me, poetry is a one-nighter, as well as a method of discipline. You have mesh the right words at the right time and implement them the right way. You don’t get pages to explain, unless you’re writing long line ballades or something, but we’ll get to that. Poetry acts as an exercise in brevity, in tight, condensed writing, and, most of all, in patience. So join me here for poetry month and we’ll see what kind of poetic disasters we can spin. :)

The first form I chose was one I’d never heard of. I found it on poetry base/poetry gnosis. They have more poetic forms than I’ve ever heard of, so plenty of stuff to choose from and experiment with if you don’t like my prompt. Also Poetic Asides through Writer’s Digest is a great resource.

So, since I love cows and that’s no secret, we’re kicking off poetry month with a form called Mad Cow. Closely related is Mad Calf so I thought I’d put them together for easier explanation. Both are alexandrine forms, which means twelve syllables a line. It’s a French creation and the French are as proud of it as the English are of iambic pentameter. Both are a pain in the ass, I’m not gonna lie, but worth the exercise. So, for Mad Cow, start with twelve syllables a line, with an end rhyme scheme of ababc cdede fgfgh hijij klklm mnono eieio.

So it looks like this:
-----------a
-----------b
-----------a
-----------b
-----------c
The next stanza goes:
----------c
----------d
----------e
----------d
----------e
And so on.

Each stanza has five lines, with a total of thirty-five lines.

Mad calf is a shorter version, with an abcde fghij klmno eieio rhyme scheme. The syllable count is shorter as well, the lines being six syllables instead of twelve, so a half-pint alexandrine. Again, five lines to a stanza, but only twenty lines of poem.

Since syllables are so annoying, at least to this metrically challenged writer, my mad cow/calf poem might come later as a comment. But relax, have fun. Poetry can be a blast, the play with words and sounds. It’s a great exercise to get the creative juices flowing, so long as you don’t take yourself too seriously.

Happy Poetry Month! :)

How Poetry Month Works at Farm and Lit

Here’s how it’s gonna go: November is novel writing month and with April as poetry month, the challenge is a poem a day for thirty days. Sound exhausting? It is, but totally worth it. Writing every day can be useful in shaking something loose. I was never as productive poetic- and flash-wise as I was in college when I did a portfolio, something like 120+ pages of completed work in 90 days. I was exhausted by the time I finished, but it was a GREAT experience and I learned a lot in a short time. Try it out here. And don’t just feel bound to poetry, flash works too.

So every day will have a new poetic form and anything else that’s going on that I feel needs writing about. :) I’ll post some of my work and feel free to write and post your own, at your own risk of course, internet copyright being what it is. Included in my regime is The Portable MFA and a condensed course of the eight-week poem deal outlined there. Like I need more work, but hey, I’m a glutton for punishment and workaholic besides.

Some valuable resources for poetry include:
Poetic Asides
www.poets.org
PoetryBase
and other resources I’ll cite as we go along.

And yes, rap music is a type of poetry. So check this out. Funny as hell. “I’m awesome.” Sorry for going crazy with the videos lately. I’m addicted.

News From the Congo

I'm not much for blogging on news, but here's something that came through my inbox that I had to pass on.

LRA “Makombo massacre” of over 300 Congolese in December 2009 brought to international attention

Makes the health care thing look pretty small, doesn't it? 300 people would have been about half the population of the town I grew up in. Imagine if we lived in these conditions. It reinforces my humble opinion that government needs to pare back to what's really important, not money and lifetime cushy jobs, but analyze what their job really means: serving the people and setting a precedent for behavior. That is the role of leaders after all. Look at Beowulf, the poem and the man a complete code of behavior. I'd like to see someone, anyone, in politics now go slay a dragon.

Pretty Cool

Listen up all you readers out there :P