Ghazals

"Ghazal Queen" Vatsala Mehra is revered among singers of the lovelorn Persian songs called ghazals. ❋ Unknown (2011)

Vatsala Mehra is revered among singers of the lovelorn Persian songs called ghazals. ❋ Unknown (2011)

Pakistan has a rich musical tradition, including the performance of Urdu-language love poems called ghazals and mystical Sufi music called Qawwali. ❋ Unknown (2011)

In the second edition, Qamar is planning to include all the poems and 'ghazals', including those he left out of the first edition. ❋ Unknown (2008)

Marilyn Hacker, who splits her time between Paris and New York, is one of our greatest exponents of poetry written in traditional forms, using sonnets, ghazals, and other forms in innovative ways. ❋ Anis Shivani (2010)

As we create and launch this multi-lingual Rumi website: OneThroughLove.org and as we present Rumi's original Persian ghazals, translated into English, Turkish and Arabic, I am reminded how translating or interpreting Rumi takes not only someone with deep Persian and English language competence, but the spiritual wisdom and the Sufi heart of a man like Coleman Barks, Andrew Harvey, Sharam Shiva, Kabir or Camille Helminski. ❋ Stephen Olsson (2011)

Some of these ghazals came about in a kind of dialogue with a friend, the poet Suzanne Gardinier, who wrote a book entirely in ghazals, entitled Today (Sheep Meadow Press, 2008). ❋ Anis Shivani (2010)

In that spirit, here is a video segment of a recitation of three Rumi ghazals odes by Coleman Barks. ❋ Stephen Olsson (2011)

Shivani: The ghazals in this book are less erotic or expressive of desire than plaintive statements of the end of desire. ❋ Anis Shivani (2010)

There is also an ongoing dialogue with the Kashmiri-American ghazal champion, Aga Shâhid Ali, who died in 2001 at only 52 (his given name "Shâhid" with the accent on the "a" means "witness" in Arabic, as I remark in one of the ghazals). ❋ Anis Shivani (2010)

The odes (ghazals) are divided into 27 sections, each a Name for the Mystery. ❋ Coleman Barks (2010)

Shivani: There is a greater proportion of ghazals in Names than in any of your previous books. ❋ Anis Shivani (2010)

"Jenkins's band played the role of the United States (playing Duane Eddy riffs) while Stuart Hall's tongue-in-cheek world music band Orquestra Mahatma played Iran (ululating horns, Persian ghazals, hypnotic Middle Eastern rhythms and so on)." ❋ Paolo Bandini (2010)

Another good friend, the British-Iranian poet Mimi Khalvati, also an interlocutor, writes ghazals. ❋ Anis Shivani (2010)