Unusual Forms

Ghazal~ Michael Collier

When I was young I couldn't wait to leave home
and then I went away to make the world my home.

In England a poet's wife suggested a word for what I felt,
"heimweh." German for homesickness even when you're home.

The agoraphobe and claustrophobe respectively
cannot bear to leave or stay inside their home.

Our day-old son wrapped in a blanket in your arms
and I'm in the car waiting to take you both home.

Mortgage means "dead pledge." To buy a house
you need one. A house can be mistaken for a home.

It won't be hard to name the poet who wrote a sonnet sequence
about his mother and father. He called it "The Broken Home."

A shovel, rake, and pickax hang inside my neighbors garage.
Like a god he has ordered the chaos of his home.

Never let me forget: colliers mine coal. Michael's an angel.
In heaven as on earth the coal of grief warms the soul's home.


...caught on to the scheme of the Ghazal? It's this:
AA/BA/CA/DA etc... (with A representing the repetend).

There is no meter to speak of--the poem is focused around tight couplets, and one repeating word (in this case, home). This latter word is what makes Ghazals so tricky--finding the right word and finessing its placement can be irksome. But the end result is like snapshots of one thing from many perspectives, esp. if the chosen repetition is a noun.

And can I just say--I love couplets.

Here's another Ghazal--I like this better than Collier's, but it is a less traditional use of the form, as it rhymes, and McHugh has spaced out the couplets to emphasize this. That's just fine, IMHO--her use of the linebreak is very, very strong. The splitting of a word on a break is difficult to do successfully, after all.

Ghazal of the Better-Unbegun ~Heather McHugh

Too volatile, am I? too voluble? too much a word-person?
I blame the soup: I'm a primordially
stirred person.

Two pronouns and a vehicle was Icarus with wings.
The apparatus of his selves made an ab-
surd person.

The sound I make is sympathy's: sad dogs are tied afar.
But howling I become an ever more un-
heard person.

I need a hundred more of you to make a likelihood.
The mirror's not convincing-- that at-best in-
ferred person.

As time's revealing gets revolting, I start looking out.
Look in and what you see is one unholy
blurred person.

The only cure for birth one doesn't love to contemplate.
Better to be an unsung song, an unoc-
curred person.

McHugh, you'll be the death of me -- each self and second studied!
Addressing you like this, I'm halfway to the
third person.

McHugh's is an excellent example of wordplay, and double meanings--she's wickedly clever, a trait I adore in a poet.

Two assignments: 1. Try for a Ghazal. You'll probably have to write more than 7 or 8 couplets to get the ones that will build into a poem--aim for 10-15, and cull from there. Take care in choosing your word--you can try a very malleable word, such as 'person' or 'home,' or you can go for the gusto and try something more difficult, such as 'avocado' or 'sunscreen.' Whatever gets you writing--you'll know when you have the right word. Don't worry so much about the couplets being thematically linked--concentrate on being crafty and descriptive with your chosen repetend. Try rhyming only if you're feeling as crafty as McHugh, because it'll be really tricky to do well in this form.

2. Just try writing couplets. This form will force you to be more careful with words and linebreaks. Try taking an old poem of yours and putting it into couplets--you'll probably be surprised at how much of the text you've written suddenly seems extraneous and worth cutting out. Couplets force the writer to really pay attenton to every single line, and help focus images. Consider this series of couplets by my fave Aussie, Les Murray:

Where humans can't leave and mustn't complain~Les Murray

Where humans can't leave and mustn't complain,
There some will emerge who enjoy giving pain.

A dreary intense groove leads them to each one
they pick to torment, and the rest will then shun.

Some who might have been picked, and natural police,
do routine hurt, the catcalling, the giving-no-peace,

but dull brilliance evolves the betrayals and names
that sear dignity and life like interior flames.

Whole circles get enlisted, and blood loyalties reversed
by self-avengers and failures-getting-in-first

but this is the eye of fashion. Its sniggering stare
breeds silenced accomplices. Courage proves rare.

This powers revolution; this draws flies to sad pools;
this is the true curriculum of schools.


..again, rhymed--hard to do, and he appears to have some meter in there (almost like iambic hexameter, but don't quote me--it doesn't seem overly regular)--and look at his linebreaks! Many poets try to endstop all end-rhymes (meaning every line ends with a comma or period); this can make a poem seem stilted and amateurish. Murray has whole rhyming couplets that require no periods, commas or semi-colons--that's the mark of a talented fellow. Note: the punctuation is not missing--most modern poetry is written in full, grammatically correct sentences. Writing without sentence-level grammar is insanely difficult to do well. We're not all ee cummings or WCW here. So, only remove your commas and periods with good reason when penning a poem. Missing punctuation rarely adds to writing when there is no greater purpose at hand.