The
Tear-filled Heart Rhyme scheme: aaAbAbAbAbAbAbAbAbAbAb
What a travesty? (Set me free) aa
From brutality, (set me free ) Refrain
Your ways are far too agrestic
The vulgarity; set me free Aa
Your lies; no Qantas jets you own;
From depravity, set me free Aa
Even cats and dogs need respect
From bestiality, set me free Aa
In your mess you have lost your wits;
Have no chastity; set me free Aa
A rat will always be a rat;
From your vanity, set me free Aa
Your Texas ranch is my prison
From calamity, set me free Aa
So many sad days I endure
From barbarity, set me free Aa
Trumpery is now my nightmare
From insanity, set me free Aa
I see clearly you cannot love
You must Cassidy, set me free Aa
Your RiRi is on bended knees
From tragedy, please set me free. Aa
(July 17, 2015)
The Ghazal is a poem of five to fifteen couplets. It is made up of a short monorhyme. The first two verses rhyme with a repeated rhyme in the second of each succeeding couplet. The Ghazal usually deals with themes of love in a melancholy mood. The roots of the Ghazal blossomed in seventh-century Arabia and gained prominence in the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century much credit to such poets as Rumi and Haftz. In the eighteenth-century, the Ghazal was used by poets writing in Urdu, a mix of the medieval languages of Northern India, including Persian. Among these poets, Ghalib is the recognized master.
(July 17, 2015)
The Ghazal is a poem of five to fifteen couplets. It is made up of a short monorhyme. The first two verses rhyme with a repeated rhyme in the second of each succeeding couplet. The Ghazal usually deals with themes of love in a melancholy mood. The roots of the Ghazal blossomed in seventh-century Arabia and gained prominence in the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century much credit to such poets as Rumi and Haftz. In the eighteenth-century, the Ghazal was used by poets writing in Urdu, a mix of the medieval languages of Northern India, including Persian. Among these poets, Ghalib is the recognized master.
Indian musicians such as Ravi Shankar and Begum
Akhtar popularized the Ghazal in the English-speaking Diaspora during the
1960s. The poet Agha Shahid Ali introduced the Ghazal in its classical form to
Americans. Ali practiced his poetic
craft in USA universities before cancer took his life in December of 2001. He
left with English Poetry writers’ a legacy on how to write a Ghazal based on
its traditional roots since it appeared from his many poetic statements he was
not particularly a fan of Ghazal in free verse. His guidelines on how to write
an English Ghazal suggested the following:
No enjambments between couplets
Couplets should be linked to a strict
formal scheme
The rhyme scheme and refrain should
remain the same throughout the Ghazal
Each line should have the same length
inclusive of rhyme and refrain whether the verses
are metrical or syllabic
The last couplet should be a
signature couplet
The scheme of rhyme and refrain
should emerge from the opening couplet of the Ghazal
These pointers have influenced how the poem, “The Tear-filled Heart” is written. During
the composition of this English Ghazal, every effort was made to ensure that
the poem reflected this “constant longing”. The Ghazal is defined by this
constant longing. This conforms to Ali's view. The poem, "The Tear-filled Heart" has eleven tetrameter couplets. A couplet has two successive
verses of poetry, is usually of equal length and rhythmic correspondence with
end-words that rhyme. The couplet is the shortest stanza form. It is joined
frequently with other couplets, to form a poem with no stanzaic divisions.
A monorhyme is a poem in which all the verses have
the same end rhyme. An end rhyme is a rhyme occurring in the terminating word
or syllable of one verse of poetry with that of another verse, as oppose to
internal rhyme.
The rhyme scheme used in this poem is - aaAbAbAbAbAbAbAbAbAbAb representing
as well the eleven stanzas in the poem. In a rhyme scheme, repeated rhymes are
shown in capital letters.
A refrain can sit on a stanza, verse, or phrase, generally pertinent to the central theme, which is repeated verbatim, usually at regular intervals throughout a poem, most often at the end of a stanza.
A refrain can sit on a stanza, verse, or phrase, generally pertinent to the central theme, which is repeated verbatim, usually at regular intervals throughout a poem, most often at the end of a stanza.
