#please read tonight by agha shahid ali

[traumxrei-archive]

MY HABIBI ILYSM AND I HAVE MISSED U /p

U R AS AMAZING AS THE DAY AS I LOST U

I COULDT NOT BEAR TO SEE U GO AWAY AGAIN HAYATI /p

ASFHDKJSFKX THE DRAMATICISM... THE DELIVERY.... 10/10 LOVE CONFESSION /J

I BET THESE ARE THE SKILLS YOU USED TO WIN OVER JAMIL HUH SJFDKJFK

AND ILYT HABIBTIII <3333 /P HEHEHE

[kvothes]

What is a ghazal? I'm very intrigued and yet have no sweet clue what it is.

Also, while my poetry appreciation is minimal, I really love that you are making this month an Event. It gives off the same feel-good energy as your Best Part of Your Day interactions and I appreciate you for it 🥰 thank you!

well thank you so much for saying so! i think poetry has a million entry points and i don't want people to be daunted. it can be a real delight. also i'm so glad you asked about this because so many people are voting for ghazals. the explanation is a bit long, but here you go:

i've heard it pronounced both guzzle and huzzle in the past—someone who speaks arabic may give a definitive answer, as this is an arabic form! one of the funny things about poetic forms is that people sometimes pick and choose how many of the rules they're going to follow—there are sonnets that don't have fourteen lines, for example—and the ghazal is no exception.

however, the main idea is this: a ghazal is made up of couplets (two-line stanzas), and the final word of each stanza has to be the same.

my favorite example of this is ghareeb by fantimah asghar. please read the whole thing! but here's a part:

what you'll notice is that each of these couplets ends with the word stranger. i love repetition like this because it shows so many approaches to a core idea.

now, a traditional ghazal has a few more rules to it, which asghar's poem is not following but some poems do. a real true classic ghazal has both lines of the first couplet end with the same word; it has a proper noun / name somewhere in the final couplet; and, most tricky, every word that comes before the final word in each couplet has to rhyme. let's look at a few stanzas from tonight by agha shahid ali:

both lines in that first couplet end with tonight. and, in every single stanza, the second-to-last word of the stanza rhymes: expel, tell, cell. you can see why some people go for the simpler version! but it's a really beautiful intricate form. hope this is clear enough!