A ghazal is a poem meant to express pain, loss, and the love that can persist through that pain. It was a popular form of poetry in the 1800s throughout Arabia and South Asia. Ghazal poems are typically constructed with a minimum of five and a maximum of fifteen couplets. The range of couplets used depends on the theme and emotional intent of the author. These poems are often written from the point of view of someone whose love can’t be acquired, and they are usually melancholy in tone.
Rules of the Form:
- It is a poem of 5 to 15 couplets
- The rhyme scheme is aA bA cA dA eA
- There is no syllable requirement
Example Ghazals
“after Christina Rosetti”
by Corey Bryan
Pour leaves into a gossamer bag, the kettle boils
in the bleak midwinter
the orange-brown water steams your mug and glasses
watching now fall in the bleak midwinter
the cinnamon scent of your mothers touch
fills your nose in the bleak midwinter
the teardrop shed at her absence joins your mug—
your mother passed this bleak midwinter
one rotation round the earth, the first and last snow falls
without her here, the end of a bleak midwinter
“childhood”
by Corey Bryan
When I was still a child
the best thing a man can be
I’d go searching in the underbrush
laughing at my scraped up knee
Together, friends and I
would go bounding in the streams
Wasting away another day
careless, innocent, carefree
I miss that little man each day
but then remember that was me.
