Cooking Ghazal

The ethos of the ghazal is transgression.

The refrain is not a repetition but a revelation. 

Ingredients:

• Your journal
• Extraneous lines from other poems that you couldn’t let go of
• Words or phrases that haunt you
• “Even the Rain” by Agha Shahid Ali
• “In Arabic” by Agha Shahid Ali
• “Invasion (0329, 1990)” by Eman Hassan
• Poems by other poets that you’re obsessed with or worship
• Random facts that endlessly excite you
• A secret that you’ve kept hidden from even yourself
• Your dreams
• Last words of the Beloved
• Song of the Rose-winged Blackbird

Steps:

• For the refrain, pick a word or a phrase that haunts you. (Mine is: the other side.) 

I find it most effective when the refrain includes a keyword.  
Examples:  
“Arabic” in Shahid’s “In Arabic” 
“Name” in Hassan’s “Invasion (0329, 1990)”

• The rhyme can be discovered in a few ways: 

Try out different possibilities.  
Let the refrain be the guide. 
Write a few isolated lines using the refrain but without consciously searching for the rhyme and see what doors manifest. 

• The rhyme-refrain combination works best for me when it carries a weight and integrity in itself but is also malleable and versatile. 

Examples:  
“bought even the rain”  
“knot? Even the rain?” 

“caress in Arabic”  
“S in Arabic” (Shahid)

• (And after trying out a few couplets, if it doesn’t work out, don’t be afraid to start all over again. Remind yourself: This is a rare luxury in life.) 
• Once you’ve found a rhyme-refrain combination, proceed to the next step.
• Using the rhyme-refrain as a dim star-guide, begin writing the couplets, without worrying too much about the line lengths, flow, unity, or anything else for that matter. Move in every direction your heart takes you: the personal, political, cultural, environmental, historical, anecdotal, familial, scientific, astrological, quotidian, carnal, spiritual, magical, mythical.… If some of the couplets are just one line or don’t have the (perfect) rhyme, that’s totally acceptable, even productive, at this stage. 
• Now go through the draft you just wrote. You already know some of the couplets are close to being, if not already, done. 
• For the ones that are monostiches or feel incomplete for some reason and to write new couplets, play with any of these combinations in each couplet: 
  • One extraneous line from a poem + Another line from a different poem of yours
  • A line from your journal + An extraneous line from your poem 
  • A random fact + A myth
  • A scientific fact + A magical element
  • A dream of yours + A dream of the Beloved 
  • You begging for one last chance + The Beloved already walking away
  • The person you are + The person the Beloved imagined you to be…

  • The possibilities are endless.

     

• The couplets are, Shahid illuminates, individual and autonomous pearls strung together into a necklace with the thread of the rhyme-refrain scheme. In the ghazal, unlike in a relationship, there is always a second chance (in every couplet). 
• Juxtapose excerpts from two poems by two other poets in a single line that at first seem to have nothing to do with each other. Now in a couplet, find a way for them—and yourself—to not only coexist but also thrive in this seemingly coerced intimacy. 
• Describe a recurring dream in a couplet. Mine is: I’m reciting a poem I finally wrote for the Beloved on New Year’s Eve, and she wakes up to a new year on someone else’s chest. 
• Describe in a couplet how painful it is to keep thinking of the Beloved but impossible not to. Do this on the desk she bought for you and in the light of the forbidden fig candle she gifted you on your last birthday. 
• Explore different types of sentences in different couplets: interrogative, imperative, conditional… 
• Revise, negate, interrogate, complicate, or remystify a statement within a couplet. 

Example:
“What will suffice for a true-love knot? Even the rain?
But he has bought grief’s lottery, bought even the rain.” (Shahid)

• (If you’re feeling ambitious: in a later couplet, revise, negate, interrogate, complicate, or remystify an earlier couplet in the poem.)
• Dedicate a couplet to the last words of the Beloved by dwelling on, analyzing, or responding to them: “My heart is just not in it anymore.” Or “I’m still young, and I want to experience new loves.” Or “It is what it is.” My response so far has been only raw tears, with the moon and without. 
• Embrace the multiplicity of pronouns in different couplets: you, I, we, she, he, they…
• Try to disrupt the monotony of the rhyme-refrain scheme whenever possible, which is often done in playful and ingenious ways.

By splitting up the refrain: 

“How did the Enemy love you—with earth? air? and fire?
He held just one thing back till he got even: the rain.” (Shahid)

By changing the lexical category of a word in the refrain (here from adverb to verb): 
“He would raze the mountains, he would level the waves;
he would, to smooth his epic plot, even the rain.” (Shahid)

• Break every rule of the ghazal but not in the way the Beloved broke you.
• In a couplet, hide a secret that you’ve kept hidden from even yourself. Mine is: I will always love her.
• The final couplet contains a play on the author’s name, known as takhallus. I think of this is as the lover’s signature at the end of the love letter. This is your last and only chance to distinguish yourself to the Beloved from her many lovers through your wit, ingenuity, self-deprecation, self-pride, and pathos by offering her your name for the final time.

Examples:  
“They ask me to tell them what Shahid means: Listen, listen:
It means ‘The Beloved’ in Persian, ‘witness’ in Arabic.” (Shahid)

“Once briefly named ‘nineteenth province,’ in lieu of our country’s stolen one.
Know me, here: bint al-Hakim, always. My name spelled backwards is name.” (Eman)

• At last, it is ready! Garnish the ghazal with two teardrops of a Baby Lion and serve it aflame under the star-butchered sky in a Himalayan desert to the Beloved who has already deserted you, the song of the Rose-winged Blackbird forever caught in your throat—