The Mind Creative SEP 2013
The ghazal spread through southeast Asia during the 12th century under Islamic sultanates and through Sufi saints. Although the original languages used were Persian and Urdu, the ghazal is today found in many languages including Arabic, Turkish, Pashto, Kashmiri, Hindi and Wolfgang von Goethe Gujarati. Under the influence of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832), this poetic form gained popularity in Germany. It was also used extensively by Friedrich Ruckert and August von Platen in their works. In Spain, the poet Federico Garcia Lorca experimented with this form and structure. The ghazal migrated to the English language in the last three decades and many poets have since then, experimented with this form’s rhyming structure. However it was the Indian-American poet Agha Shahid Ali who introduced the English ghazal, in its classic form, to the world. His book “Ravishing Disunities - Real Ghazals in English” contains works from American poets who have experimented with the ghazal in English. Finally, I would like to incorporate a few couplets from an English Ghazal “Ghazal of the Better-Unbegun” by Heather McHugh and a few from the Srinagar based poet Waseem Malla. These English ghazals are quite faithful to the rhymerefrain structure.
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Agha Shahid Ali
Heather McHugh