Ghazal and Repetition

Agha Shahid Ali says that “The ghazal has a stringently formal disunity.” (pg. 210) A ghazal is made up of many couplets, at least five, but what is interesting is that each couplet is thematically independent of one another. When writing a ghazal, one must include a qafia (a scheme rhyme) and a radif (refrain) in the opening couplet. This rhyme scheme and refrain will be repeated throughout the entire poem, but even though the second line of every couplet ends with the same words, the mood and theme for each of the couplets is different. I find the ghazal to be an intriguing form of poetry because each couplet can be read as a poem itself, and even though there must be lyrical similarities between the couplets, each of them “is autonomous, thematically and emotionally complete in itself.” (pg. 210)

To reveal the true message of the poem, each couplet can be interpreted individually, and then one can interpret the poem as a whole. Upon my first time reading the ghazals, I found it difficult to decipher the main message of the poems. This may be because the couplets (with the exception of the first and last couplets) can be seen as rearrangeable, so the order in which I was reading gave me no insight to the meaning of the poem. Unique to the ghazal, the poem does not suffer if the couplets are repositioned, or even if a couplet is deleted. Ali focuses on this aspect of ghazals, and he asks the question “Do such freedoms frighten some of us?” (pg. 212) I did not understand the question when I read it for the first time, but after completing the reading, I understand that this freedom allows for many ways of interpretation, maybe even too many to the point where the true meaning is blurred and difficult to understand.

In Rafique Kathwari’s Jewel House Ghazal, I felt like he used the refrain, “the rain”, to convey a certain ambiance for the entire poem. The subject for each couplet was different; one about his mother, another about flowers, and another about God; but by ending each couplet with “in the rain” it gave the poem a sad overtone. His use of the form helped me to interpret this ghazal as a story about mother and son, rather than a confusing jumble of different themes.

Ali, Agha Shahid. “Ghazal: To Be Teased into DisUnity.” An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art. Eds. Annie Finch & Katherine Varnes. Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan Press, 2002.