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Once more, a variety of styles and voices, but this time a thematic thread through the six ghazals presented. I tried to draw out that thread in my comments on the ghazals. Your results may differ. I'll do a blog post announcing this issue. If you have responses you care to share, please submit them as comments to that post.
I have some ghazals for the sugar radif challenge. There's another month to go: bury me in sugar!
The six ghazals in the August 2008 issues are varied in form and approach but share some essential ghazal themes — romantic love, divine love, the ghazal tradition.
Bill Batcher's "Love Knot" experiments more with the ghazal form than the other five do. The intense repetition of the qafiya and radif tie an intricate knot that (to my ear) expresses the them effectively. To use a term of Freud's, adapted by literary critics, these formal features of Batcher's ghazal are over-determined.
Here's a reminder of the new radif challenge: the radif is "sugar," and the guidelines are on the main page for The Ghazal Page.
The results of the challenge using "moon" as the radif were excellent, as you will see when you read the poems. Because of the success of the first two radif challenges, I'm making it a permanent feature of The Ghazal Page. A new radif challenge is posted on the main page.
The issue is arranged in four pages: New Moon, Waxing Moon, Full Moon, and Waning Moon. I used my intuition to decide which poems went on which page and in what order. Because of the "jumps" between couplets, a particular poem may use imagery of more than one phase of the moon; my arrangement is based on my sense of the overall effect of the poems. I hope you are as impressed as I by the range of tones, images, and approaches to the ghazal form in these twenty poems.
If you have comments or responses to any of the poems, you may send them as comments to the blog post announcing this issue. Also, a new radif challenge is posted on the main page.
The special summer issue is ready at last! I plan to leave it linked from the main page at least through August, even though there will be the moon radif challenge results and an August issue. The special summer issue has three pages in order to make it more accessible with shorter files. You will find some familiar names there as well as some new ones. Please check "About the Poets" for more information on most of the poets represented in this issue.
A day or two late, but here's the April issue. Please enjoy!
Having just finished preparing the March issue, including writing the Editor's Comments, I'm sitting here in the chill of "unseasonably" cold temperatures. The temperature applet on my desktop tells me that it's 28 F. outside. There was a light snowfall overnight and a strong northwest wind has persisted all day. Meaning? Meaning the six refreshing spring ghazals in the March issue have helped me be patient as I wait for spring. I hope you will find equal or greater reward in reading them.
I'm assembling the Clouds and Rain special issue and hope to publish it by March 8th. It will have a number of excellent ghazals.
It's cold outside — about as cold as it gets in the Ozarks (but not quite the coldest). The poems in the February issue, though are warm with the ferment of the imagination. Sip them or gulp them, but savor them.
Here's a final reminder of the "clouds and rain" radif challenge. There are still a couple of weeks to go. I will either prepare those ghazals as a separate special issue or as a page within the March or April issue. Send 'em in!
Welcome to the January issue of the 2008 Ghazal Page, with six poems by three poets. You'll have noticed a new appearance to The Ghazal Page. My approach for the 'zine is to create fairly basic HTML, without fancy trappings. I do use some XHTML and a Cascading Style Sheet or two. I hope to explore some more CSS possibilities in 2008 and may do a redesign about half-way through. A few years back, I did a page using some of the positioning possibilities of CSS, and, guess what? The Internet Explorer version then current wouldn't display the layout properly. (Other current browsers would, though.) I'd like to try CSS positioning again.
Don't forget the "clouds and rain" radif challenge!
Interested readers — for instance, seeking permission to reprint a poem — can always contact the poet through me.
You will find 20 ghazals here; there are four pages as well as the index page that this link leads to. Enjoy!
Three are three pages in this issue, to represent the three months without an issue of The Ghazal Page.