Ghazals

The ghazal is a perennially popular form of poetry, originating in Seventh Century Arabia, later popular with Persian poets, as well as poets writing in Urdu. Agha Shahid Ali's anthology, Ravishing Disunities, real ghazals in English (Wesleyan University Press, 2000) is an anthology of contemporary English Language poets writing in the form. Ali's introduction provides an excellent historical and formal overview of the form. The Poetry Center Library also has a fascinating collection of versions from the Urdu of the 19th century master poet Ghalib. Ghazals of Ghalib (Columbia University Press, 1971) includes several translations of each of 37 different ghazals, by poets W. S. Merwin, Adrienne Rich, William Stafford, David Ray and Mark Strand. The Selected Poetry of Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (Penguin, 1999) contains translations of Goethe's famous collection of ghazal inspired poems, the "West-Eastern Divan" produced between 1814 and 1818. Federico Garcia Lorca's collection of Gacelas, The Tamarit Divan is included in his Collected Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002). Adrienne Rich's series of Ghazals "Homage to Ghalib" are included in her books (Norton, 1969) and in her Leaflets, Poems 1965-1968 and Poems: Selected and New, 1950-1974 (Norton, 1975). Robert Bly's translations (in cooperation with Sunil Dutta) have been published as The Lightning Should Have Fallen On Ghalib (Ecco Press, 1999). And of course there is Ali's own collection of ghazals, Call Me Ishmael Tonight (Norton, 2003).