I once told a psychic that I have a really big spiritual appetite, and she liked that phrase so much she asked if she could use it. The way this psychic asked for permission was like how an actor might hear someone say something funny and then ask if they could use it in their act.
I intended to write an essay about appetite, but that topic is still waiting for its turn in my head. There are some things I still have to think through; the main question being, what am I trying to say? I've lived with such a big appetite throughout my life that sometimes I feel like it's devoured my sense of self if I let it get out of hand. As I get older, I can now see my appetite for food, fun, love, attention, connection, and art as powerful if I hone it consciously. However, hunger and desire are so closely linked that they inevitably become problematic terms, especially when the person using them is a woman.
I'll write more on this later because to be completely honest, I just didn't give myself the writing blocks to attempt this topic. Instead, today, I thought I'd share some of my poetry.
The ghazal, a poetic form I've been practicing and studying since college, is the closest manifestation to literary desire and appetite on the page. Not many people have heard of ghazals because they are, historically, eastern forms, which were pushed out of the Western Canon. Persian poets like Rumi and Hafiz were known for writing them in their initially intended language (13th century Arabic). Then, Adrienne Rich was one of the many American poets who revived the ghazal and twisted it beautifully to work for the English speaking world, starting in 1968.
"Story happens when a character meets a landscape," was one of the most profound statements C.S. Giscombe, a poetry professor, told me at Berkeley. Because of this professor and because of reading but mostly because of life, I've learned that circumstance, and the body you're born into, is a setting and plot unto itself. Giscombe was another professor who opened an entirely new world of poetry when he taught me the ghazal.
Because of these poems, I learned how to stay psychically and emotionally connected when experiencing cognitive dissonance. To be able to make sense in the senselessness of a poem is not something I've mastered (or ever will) but have practiced because of this poetic meditation. I learned how to hold so many different emotions and sentiments all at once and realize how they could possibly be related, and even, woven together.
This is a very bad analogy, but I'll go with it: Western literature commonly looks to the sonnet as the classic poetic form, since folks like Shakespeare made it as common as men playing women on stage. Sonnets are known for their rhyming sequences that end with some sort of resolution or answer to a thematic question. Westerners may have the sonnet, but Arabic-speaking countries (known as Persia in the 13th/14th centuries) have the ghazal. I've always found this poetic form to be far more spell-binding.
A ghazal is a flock of many types of birds that are unrelated and flying many different directions. A ghazal is the last cry of the antelope as it's being devoured by a lion. The magic of a ghazal is in the form because they are supposed to be structurally, thematically, and emotionally autonomous.
Ghazals of made up of couplets with a repeating refrain of a word that links all the couplets together. The form is made of five couplets at a minimum, but typically no more than fifteen. What stitches these couplets together is not only the refrain but also the internal rhyme between the couplets. Usually, the poet makes their mark in some way at the very end as a signature.
I'll leave you with two ghazals I wrote years ago. This was inspired by a Portuguese word that captivated me because I knew the feeling behind this word so deeply, but our limited emotional vocabulary in English kept me from ever being able to articulate the feeling.
(By the way, one of my favorite things to learn are words in other languages that we don't have a word for in English. If you know of any, reply to this email because I'd love to hear them!)
Thanks for reading my Sunday night musings; this was written haphazardly over a glass of Crystal Light Fruit Punch because I wanted to squeeze everything I could out of this weekend. I hope this quick and dirty meditation on ghazals and the poems I'm about to share with you opens you up to the richness of this poetic form.
I broke from convention—as did many of the poets from the 1970s when they revived this form—but not out of creative genius, but mainly out of necessity. It's so hard to pull off, so don't use mine as examples. I recommend reading Rumi's "The Sky Has Never Seen Such a Moon" (translated by Brad Gooch and Maryam Mortaz) and Adrienne Rich's book of poetry, Fact of a Doorframe which includes "Homage to Ghalib."
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