Yep. That's very helpful. Unfortunately, when I initially googled this the first full page of results all referenced the movie by this name. I wasn't persistent enough or I would have found the correct reference. My bad.

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My standard visual for reading ghazals is to imagine a disembodied head (not always the same one) coming into focus out of thin air in holographic profile reading aloud each sher/couplet in a dramatic, accentuated way and then floating out of view, making space for another disembodied head to make an appearance...

I think, too, that there is an implied elongated silence that exists between shers of a ghazal that a single space does not convey. In fact, although it may be verboten to suggest, I could even see each couplet being L/R/C justified to further create the appearance of each having their own place/space. Although each couplet in a ghazal is bound by a single word, their messages are meant to vary as if being sectioned off from a whole.

I love the language and the imagery of this. I'm just struggling to bring the whole of it into focus. Part of that is the form and part of it is your Picasso-like word-visuals.

I like Yves' description: "Ghazals to me are just utter cold bare tests of phrasing."

I've just noticed your link to help explain the title and it sheds much light! I had googled "Nocturama" but didn't get past the movie by the same name (seemingly interesting movie, btw).



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I think you’re more of a ghazal guru than I am now, Paula, but my impression is that none of this separation between qafiya and radif is correct for a strict, traditional ghazal. I’d personally be lenient with short, unstressed words like “to” and “of,” which I think of as attached to the qafiya, making a slant rhyme (and I prefer it if they rhyme a little too, e.g., in, is, its). I’m too much of a traditionalist to be happy about wider separations like “through sleep &” and “them by our,” but I wouldn’t strip the poem of its ghazal status on those grounds. It’s an unruly one, that’s all.

This isn’t like you, Cameron. I was all ready to wrack my brains over this one as I always have, and all of a sudden you throw out a clue that ties everything up like a Christmas present. Viewed from that angle, the poem is indeed delightful, but I thought you once said you’d be mortified to have a poem of yours described like that. There must be a false bottom …

Perhaps the title is either too much or not enough. Not enough for lazy readers like me who give up after one page of errant google search results and just plow ahead reading the poem without the decryption key. Too much for diligent readers who pick up the key before starting their reading of the poem. For them, it's no longer a riddle, and they don't get the fun of cracking it. I wish it were fish and not unidentified nocturnal beasties, though the black and white imagery now makes more sense.

Hi, Cameron—

I like this a lot, especially the ambiguity you develop about who is imprisoned and who is free.
In the 6th and 7th shers, the qaafiya and the radif are separated by quite a few words. Could you bring them closer with only a word or two (preposition, article, or possessive adjective) separating them?
Examples:
Sher 6: “like the white days we’ve slept through & defied the glass.”
Sher 7: “the life that they’ve been denied by [our] glass?”

I wonder if “deride” would be a good qaafiya to contrast with “sanctified.”
“Guide,” “implied,” “collide,” and “deified” also seem like promising possibilities.

Glenn

Rattle's latest issue was a "Tribute to Ghazals" and it was fascinating to read twenty of them in a row and see what different poets chose to do with the form. But your comment put me in mind of what poet Mary Keating wrote in her contributor notes:

I just love that.

Cameron, to get to your poem and the actual point of this thread -- I really like this, very much. It helped perhaps that I already knew what a Nocturnal House is (thank you, Roller Coaster Tycoon), but I don't think that spelling it out hinders the poem; it's the inversion of our [assumed] perspective that really makes it, and for that, it is helpful to have some idea of the context.

I agree with Yves's first comment that you may not need the final two shers. "Why do their eyes still follow us if not to glimpse / the life that's been denied them by our glass?" feels like a natural end-point. You've landed the plane; now let us take that away to chew on.

I like this a lot, Cameron. I have one very dull, though for me important, criticism/suggestion. I think it's a shame that you don't keep to the very regular iambic hexameter that you establish in the opening couplet. The poem is haunting and hypnotic, but for me that quality would be heightened by a more consistent metre. That's all.

Cheers

Mark

I've never written in this form so have nothing to add to that discussion.

I've been reading this off and on over the last few days. One of the things I've been looking for is how so often you take a thing and transform it into a different thing before our eyes, how the world inside your poems is never steady, much less anchored. This is very good. It's a strong poem and I'd buy and talk about a book made of poems like this. Have you thought of making it longer? Now there is a hint that the two worlds can be confused. How different are they? Maybe with a little more space that could become ever more milky. What's a few hours--or time zones--between friends anyway? You state that theme in the close. I can't help but wonder how much more could happen before our eyes.

I just realized I was thinking of early Eliot.

It's a challenge to comment on your poems. I'm not good with the forms but I'm always sucked in by the poem. It's more like giving rehearsal notes to the playwright. What the mingling was more thorough. Intense?

But as I said, it's a strong poem as it is. I'm just brainstorming what may be BS but why not share it?

*** I just realized I suggested your last poem be longer. I hope I haven't fallen into a comfort zone critique. I don't think so. Need to consider that.

Hi Cameron,

I like this. The dark, uncanny mood of it. It reminds me of a science fiction short story (more than one, I think) that I've read -- in a good way, I hasten to add. And it leaves itself open to being read as metaphor or allegory without laying one out. As John says, I'd happily read a book of poems like these.

On the form: It's ghazal-like in its couplet and rhyme-scheme, though for me, the narrative form of the poem with its sequential stanzas gets in the way of it working like a ghazal, doing what a traditional ghazal does. But fair enough, that's not what the poem is aiming for and it doesn't have to. For me, the variation in the position of the internal rhyme works. I still hear the rhyme, and besides, you're not writing a traditional ghazal.

I much prefer the original final couplet, albeit with "are just" in place of "are but". I think it's stronger, denser. I think you've diluted it by making it into two.

In the two couplets you've split this into, "At first we paid them no attention" seems very flat/prosaic, and "and all of us and our housed lives", a little wordy, since "our housed lives" would pretty much cover "all of us", I think.

In this couplet:

What hunts them, in that air? & if they were admitted
we'd teach them love: the coil & hide of glass.

The first "&" seems a little superfluous. With an "and if", the questions would seem to be continuing, but what follows is a statement. It might be interesting to try making it a question, though. To be less definite about the consequences if their admission. More meditative, maybe. For example,

What hunts them, in that air? & if they were admitted
could we teach them love: the coil & hide of glass?

or

What hunts them, in that air? & if they were admitted
would we teach them love: the coil & hide of glass?


best,

Matt