Trapped in the Ghazal

The Ghazal is an Arabic poetic form that consists of five or more couplets pulled together by a strict pattern. The opening couplet (referred to as the matla) is used to establish the radif, a word or phrase that will be repeated at the end of the following couplets, and the qafia, a rhyming scheme that will precede the radif. The matla establishes this strict pattern by repeating it twice in both lines of the first couplet (as opposed to just the one time that it is repeated at the end of the following couplets). In An Exaltation of Forms by Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes, this strict pattern is described as “an alluring tension of a slave trying to master the master” (211). Though this specifically is referring to a master-slave-like relationship between the writer and their work, I believe this can be applied to the reader as well. Rafique Kathwari’s “Jewel House Ghazal” shows us how this feeling of entrapment can be transferred to the reader through the use of the repetition of its radif: “the rain”

The repetition of the radif in this poem draws the reader back to the feelings experienced in the matla of the poem. Kathwari entices this feeling by writing “In Kashmir, half asleep, Mother listens to the rain./ In another country, I feel her presence in the rain.” (Kathwari 214). This matla immediately associates rain with whatever feeling we felt while reading this couplet. For me, this gives off a feeling of comfort but also draws me to feel trapped by the rain. At first, his mothers visceral presence in the rain gives off the feeling of comfort, but as the radif consistently brings the reader back to this couplet, the feeling of comfort changes to a feeling of pressure.

The narrator also seems to feel trapped by the rain. As we progress through the poem, we see that the narrator seems to feel pressured by his mother. “…Mother reshapes my ghazal,/ ‘No enjambments!’ she says. ‘Wah, wah’ my chants in the rain” (Kathwari 214).​​ The repetition of “the rain” again draws us back to the matla where we are told the speaker is forever tied to their mother through this rain. Rain is a universal concept, no matter where the character goes he knows he can feel the presence and pressure of his mother in it. Furthermore, no matter which couplet we find ourselves in, we readers are also constantly being drawn back into the concept of rain and how it made each of us feel.

So by reading Kathwari’s “Jewel House Ghazal” we effectively attain a level of understanding of this “master-slave” relationship that the writer is told to have. We readers end up being as much of a “slave” to the form as the writers that made it. Ultimately, understanding the background of this form can truly help deepen your bond with the poems that use it.

Kathwari, Rafique. “Jewel House Ghazal.” An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art, Edited by Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes, U of Michigan P, 2002, p. 214.

Finch, Annie, and Kathrine Varnes, An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art, U of Michigan P, 2002, pp. 210-216.