My ghazal #1...?

Question

Here is my first attempt at writing a ghazal:

So steady on her course she runs
Through the spongy dark of the night sky

Her pale glory smiles into every heart
Her grinning spark of the night sky

Stars dance to make her trailing swath
An amusement park of the night sky

She waxes and wanes and waxes again
As she continues her arc of the night sky

She brands my soul while she quietly crafts
An indelible mark of the night sky

If you know the form...write one. 10 points to the one that I think is the best (arbitrarily of course.)

If you don't know the form check here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghazal it's a pretty good explanation.

Answer 1

In addition to the previous replies:

"Twentieth-century American poets have omitted the rhyme while retaining the couplet form and the approximate length. They also emphasize a disconnectedness between couplets, juxtaposing apparently unrelated observations, placing insights or images side by side without explaining their connection. These gaps can be a great source of power and mystery. In writing a ghazal, you have to use impulse and intuition more than rationality. It helps to make each couplet interesting and complete in itself. Fragments, glimpses, and exclamations often need no more than a couplet. And it helps to make a "jump" after each couplet, from the political to the personal, from talk to thought, from idea to image, from near to far. "

Answer 2

It's an interesting attempt at the form, and keeps some of the formal qualities. I would argue that you're missing the opening stanza (matla) which would have both lines ending in "-ark of the night sky". You also seem to not have a closing stanza (maqta) with your signature (takhallus). My only other issue (and this leans towards personal taste, so take it or leave it) is that your stanzas seem more or less narrative and connected. In a ghazal, each couplet should be able to stand alone as an individual piece or poem.

That being said, it's a very solid start. Check out
www.ghazalpage.net and consider submitting it there.

Good stuff.

Answer 3

For a first attempt it's okay. You've got a lot of mundane word choices in here, and with a form like a ghazal word choice is fairly critical, so you should find alternatives to "dark," "heart," and "soul" if possible. In addition to the comment about the couplets should stand on their own... they really should be individual poems, not connected in a linear fashion to the others. So linear, narrative story telling is a bit tough to do with this form. In addition, you should think perhaps in how you can mix up the end words, like if your choice had allowed you to use a homonym or if you had use "ight sky" so you would have variables like "right sky, tight sky, light sky, slight sky, etc, etc.