[Jean L. Kreiling]

"Guzzle," anyone? (I'm told that's the correct pronunciation.) This very old Middle Eastern form was new to me not so long ago, and this website supports it in a big way. I'm pleased that three of my efforts appear in the June issue, which will unfortunately be among its last. (So submit now!!!)

http://www.ghazalpage.net/2014/index.html

[Janice D. Soderling]

Good on ya, Jean. It has been announced on these S. pages, and I am so sad it is going.

I'll read your ghazels a.s.a.p. Looking forward to them.

[Mary Cresswell]

The December issue of The Ghazal Page is now online. http://www.ghazalpage.net/2014/

Sad to say, it is the last issue of a very interesting journal.

The website will be available until early next year, according to the editor - but ... aren't there archive websites that will keep it available after that? I don't know any names, but I am sure they exist.

[Esther Murer]

Does the Wayback Machine still archive stuff?
I have urged Gene to find a way to archive it, but I guess he's just out of steam and no one seems to have come forward to take it over, so.

[Maryann Corbett]

I've run a search at The Internet Archive (the Wayback Machine) on the URL. I'm going to try to link to the results; let's see if this works.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.ghazalpage.net

It's not everything, but it's something.

[Esther Murer]

It works! Thanks! I'll tell Gene.

The Ghazal Page certainly expanded my horizons with its explorations of varieties of the classical ghazal, and the way Gene challenged us to push the boundaries of the form and explore what else could be done with it in English. The ghazal became one of my fallback forms for, say, when I get stuck during NaPo.

I don't know where "guzzle" comes from - I suppose Urdu, via Agha Shalid Ali. My son, who knows Farsi and Arabic, says that in Farsi its sort of RrraZAHL (he hears the initial consonant as a velar French "r"; my guess is that it's more the voiced equivalent of German "ch" (Dutch "gh"). Anyway, he says Arabic is the same but with the stress on the first syllable. So (except for one I wrote called "Chocolate guzzle") I'm going with Gha-ZAL.

Esther