"A ‘Ghazal’ Sensibility on Valentine’s Day"
"The unconnected couplets disrupt thematic or narrative unity. As Shahid Ali’s lines return to the refrain 'in Arabic' and the 'ess' rhyme before it, they leap from Majnoon Laila to Lorca to the occupation of Palestine. The ghazal’s ability to contain a multitude of ideas, images and tones without bothering to logically link them—its 'contrapuntal air,' as Shahid Ali calls it—makes it, for me, the best kind of love poem."
via NEW LINES MAGAZINE |
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What Sparks Poetry:
David Baker on "The Telling"
"I stood there at the glacier and felt deep below my feet the world moving and the ice dying. Glaciers melt from the bottom, and from within, as they creep along inexorably toward lower ground and, eventually, toward oceans and seas. How to write about such things? How can a small lyric poem begin to suggest the complexities of the subject and this place? I guess the answer is, how can we not try?" |
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