[R. Nemo Hill]

The ghazal really is an exacting form. Perhaps that's why a lot of the contemporary Western examples tend to omit at least one of its rules. In my own I dispense with the rhyme, as I take the form as an opportunity to utilize the repetend as a form of rhyme. Many of them omit the mention of the author's name in the final sher, the self-address. The subject matter also veers precipitously away from the longings of love and desire that were their original inspiration. I notice, in Paula's thread, that she tries to ascertain, in the act of comparative composition, just what liberties are allowed. It seems fair to use the form as one will, morphing it: for the poem is the jewel, as opposed to the form.

And despite all that, Cameron, I do harbor a prejudice against your poem since it violates the one rule of the ghazal that I find its most significant: that the shers be discrete entities; that one changes focus and navigational direction in the intervals between them; that they be related only by that repeated word. Your shers, on the contrary, develop almost narratively (as Matt points out), they all strive to clarify one direction of thought, building one upon the other. And though I like them, I can't help but want to wrench them from their common purpose—a common purpose which seems to smother their more oblique connections. Fairly or unfairly, I confess it will take me a lot of effort to judge the poem objectively, to wipe away my expectations of the form.

Nemo