[Susan McLean]

Ghosted: A Ghazal

Does anger's barbed wire pierce and bind your heart?
Or has it grown a bitter rind, your heart?

My letters are returned, my calls unanswered.
I search the net, but cannot find your heart.

Our buddy movie spooled out to its end.
Is that what you think? Be kind. Rewind your heart.

They say that love is blind. It may be. Is it
a blind eye or a hunting blind, your heart?

Maybe you're ill. Do webs of plaque obstruct
the branching pathways to your mind, your heart?

Perhaps you've moved, packed up your cat and vanished,
reset your bearings, realigned your heart.

I scan death notices for you. Has someone
embalmed your memories or brined your heart?

Is my distress a taste you crave? Dissolve
the pearl in wine. Drink. I've resigned your heart.

Whatever ensues, this is where I sign off.
I'll never know if I've maligned your heart.


Revisions:
S1L1 was "Does the barbed wire of anger bind your heart?"
S2L2 "Searching" was "Scanning"; line was "Searching my nets, I cannot find your heart."
S3L1 "buddy movie" was "friendship's mixtape"
S4L1 "Is" was "Was"
S5 was "Maybe you're ill. Does tangled tau obstruct / the maze I hack through to remind your heart?" then "the paths I hack through to remind your heart?"
S7L1 was "I scan the obits for your name. Has someone"
S8 was "Is my distress a taste you crave? Drink up. / Dissolve the pearl in Riesling. I've resigned your heart."
S9L1 "sign" was "get"
S9L2 was "I'll never know: have I maligned your heart?"

[Mark McDonnell]

Hi Susan,

I like a good ghazal and I like this one. It works a lot of varied ideas and images into its theme. I have a few suggestions/questions.

In the first couplet (I know there’s a fancier word but I’m going to stick with couplet) the two options, anger and bitterness, feel more or less synonymous to me, yet the “Or” makes them sound like contrasting ideas. Could “And” work instead?

In the third couplet, and this may be a very picky point, the phrase you use “Be kind. Rewind” was famously always used in video rental shops to remind people to rewind their VHS movies before returning them. It doesn’t really fit with mixtapes, to me, which one could just press “play” on and enjoy at any point. Obviously, I understand how you are using it but the 1980s teenager in me drew back a little. Could you get away with, “Our friendship’s VHS played to the end” or “Our buddy movie played out to its end” or some such thing?

In couplet five I didn’t understand “tangled tau” until Googling told me that “tau” is a protein that has some influence on Alzheimer’s disease. I wondered if this was a somewhat obscure reference to make the point. Maybe it’s just my lack of medical know-how.

Finally, by the last two couplets the speaker seems to have resigned themselves to the loss of the friend. Yet the poem ends on a question, which suggests that in fact the haven’t resigned themselves to it after all. I understand that this is probably deliberate but I wondered if it might be more powerful to stick with the resignation, like this:

Whatever ensues, this is where I get off.
I'll never know if I maligned your heart.

Finally, “Dissolve the pearl in Riesling. I've resigned your heart” seems to have 6 beats. It doesn’t particularly bother me but it might bother you.

Mark

[Matt Q]

Hi Susan,

Nice to see you taking on a ghazal. I think this one works well.

In S2, the fishing metaphor of L2 seemed disconnected from L1, but on rereading, I figure maybe 'nets' is intended to relate to the internet. In which case, maybe that'd be better as "searching" rather than "scanning", which also avoids the repetition of "scan" in S7. It maybe opens the reading up more to other kinds of networks (like extended friendship/associate networks for example, for which "scan" doesn't seem to work so well).

S4L1, I wondered why the second sentence is in the past tense not the present. Assuming the friend is still alive, and the ghosting continues, wouldn't "is it" be better?

S7L1, I tend to hear tet:
i SCAN the oBITS for your NAME. Has SOMEone

Read aloud and naturally (well, naturally for me!) I hear S8L2 as pentameter. The full stop breaks up the three consecutive unstressed syllables that would otherwise lead to the middle one ("I've") being promoted.

I did wonder if you might go with "this is where I sign off" in the final sher? Just as a nod to the Takhullus. I mean, only poets will get it, but it's mostly them who read poems In fact, thinking about a Takhallus, if you wanted one, I wondered if there might be a way to end the poem with something like "signed, my heart", maybe in another sher.

Like Mark, I didn't get the tau reference. My dad had Alzheimer's, but I guess I didn't read up enough on the mechanisms. There might be a way to drop a heavier hint. "Did walls of plaque / construct" might have done it for me. Maybe not. Maybe I'd have thought to teeth Either way, I wonder if "construct" works better. A maze is already an obstruction/obstacle to reminding their heart.

Matt

[Susan McLean]

Thanks for the helpful suggestions. I have made some revisions and am pondering others.

Mark, the contrast I was going for in the first sher was between feeling pain and protecting oneself with an outer layer that resists and deflects. I do get what you mean about the overlap between anger and bitterness, but they feel distinct to me, one hotter, one colder. You make a good point about the difference between a cassette and a videotape, so I have changed that line. I have changed "tau" to "plaque" as a more familiar word to evoke dementia. In the conclusion, I meant the final question to evoke the state of always being in doubt, which being ghosted causes. But you may be right that it is better to end on a note of resignation. Good catch on the hexameter in S8. I have revised it.

Matt, with "nets" I was hoping to evoke both the Internet and the effort to "catch" the missing friend. But you have a point about the repetition of "scan," so I have changed that. I will also change S4L1. I've always pronounced "obit" with the stress on the first syllable, but I note that there are two accepted pronunciations, so I think that will have to change, too. I accepted your suggestion of "sign off" for "get off." I may have been overly ingenious in my choice of Takhallus. "Ensues" was meant to suggest a confused Susan.

Susan

[Jim Moonan]

.

(Note: I'm just now seeing your edits and response to M&M. I was working on my comments below offline and posted them without checking to see if you had already responded to them. It makes most of what I said below mute...)

I love the onion-like layers of thinking that are peeled off in this. The ghazal is a perfect fit for the subject of ghosting. It gives credence to poetic forms in general to my thinking. It is a matter of matching the right form with the right subject. I only wish I had the time to dabble more in them. Realistically, that time has passed. Your poem gave me the double-barreled pleasure I look for in reading poetry: well chosen words arranged in a transformational way, and providing a full plate of thoughts to dwell on. This poem does both for me.

But M&M’s comments kickstarted me to revisiting certain parts to see where there might be room for improvement. Again, the poem succeeded on all counts for me, but there are, in fact, as M&M allude to, spots that can be looked at. The one spot I zeroed in on was the ending couplet. Yes, it brings the poem to an end, but it doesn’t bring it to a climax. Is it the taste of resignation that you want to leave the reader with? I guess my point is, the N could choose to linger on what drives the poem throughout: perplexity. Hurt. Resentment. Ghosting is a cruel way to end a friendship. Maybe the N could question herself: has the ghosting lead to a sense of being gaslighted? Could it be that it is something else that has abruptly ended the friendship? Was it crossing over into something more intimate? Rather than ending in resignation, would it be worthwhile to consider bringing in a twist? A lashing out? One last call for contact? Or is the poem accomplishing what the N wants: resignation. I can fully understand how you would. It’s just that the poem is intriguing and I would like to remain intrigued. Maybe. Or maybe that's just how ghosting ends... I doubt my thoughts will sway you, though. This feels done.

Though I hear Mark’s logic with the “Be Kind. Rewind” association with VHS tapes vs. cassette tapes, I easily made the connection and it didn’t detract for me. In fact, I actually have two cassette tapes that I have stowed in my sock drawer. Both of those tapes are partially unraveling and I keep meaning to get a #2 pencil to rewind them. So I made that kind of association : )

Go, ghazal. Go!

.

[Joe Crocker]

Hi Susan I like the original and the changes you are making. Many very ingenious and enjoyable twists and turns.

I thought S1L1 “barbed wire of anger” was maybe a little grandiloquent, especially right at the start of the piece. I would probably go with something like “Do anger and barbed wire bind your heart?”

And S4 was a little too knotty for me to easily untangle. Trying to get the “blind eye” (Nelson?) and the “hunting blind” to fit together in a single line feels very ambitious. You might simplify it

They say that love is blind. That may be so
Or does it hide behind a blind, your heart?

" Ensues" struck me a slightly odd in the final couplet. I would have gone with "happens". I’d never heard of a Takhallus, so your confused "susan" went straight over my head. But it is very clever.

Good fun

Joe

[Roger Slater]

I think this is quite good and makes great use of the form. I thought all the couplets, though different, were quite pointed in suggesting reasons the speaker might have been ghosted. The one exception for me was the fourth couplet, which doesn't really make sense since the speaker knows quite well that she hasn't been ghosted because her friend has gone blind, so she wouldn't ask if the blindness was literal. I'd vote for just omitting that couplet, but either way this is fine work.

[Susan McLean]

Jim, I am glad to hear that it mainly works for you. A ghazal is a scattershot portrait from many different angles, so it can include a lot of contradictions and nuances. This is only the third one I have written, and I feel I am still learning how they work. I am still on the fence about whether I want the last line to convey resignation or continued bafflement. Ghosting leads to all questions and no answers.

Joe, I have tried an alternate version of S1L1. In S4, I am trying to imply that it is the friend's heart that is blind, not the friend, but also that the friend may be hiding as a means to inflict damage. The last couplet is supposed to include the Takhallus, the poet's naming of himself or herself (often indirectly), so part of the fun is in trying to figure out how the poet has done so.

Roger, I am glad you enjoyed it. See my note above to Joe about what I am trying to say in S4. It is very condensed, perhaps too much.

Susan

[Michael Cantor]

Total, unpoetic nerd that I am, the first thing that I do when I encounter a ghazal is to check the last stanza for the signature. Yup, it's there, Sue, so it's safe for me to proceed.

I like the thrust and concept of this, and I agree with the changes you made, but overall I'm not as enthusiastic as the other readers. What I particularly like about it is the proclivity of internal rhymes - going beyond the basic ghazal requirements - which I think work particularly well in a ghazal. What bothers me, however, is that the writing/word choices sometimes seem forced. To certain extent I think you can get away with this in a ghazal - a slight air of other-wordliness can work with and help the overall ghazal - but it isn't working for me here - too many forced rhymes.

To some extent, I think the internal rhymes - which I praised above - have also led you into the forced language/rhymes (do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself).

In S2 searching my nets seems forced. Buddy movie in S3 doesn't work for me because it is too divorced from the language of the ghazal. In S4 I like all the internal rhymes, but I agree with Joe that it's tough to untangle, and the stanza doesn't work for me.. In S5 the internal rhymes sound good - but also seem too forced. Maybe back off and replace hack, particularly since you have another ack in S6. I love S6. brined your heart in S7 is dreadfully forced. Could you do something with entwined? I don't understand S8. Where'd that pearl from? And, while there's nothing wrong with S9, I'm personally a clash of cymbals on the last line kind of guy, and maligned is more of a lawyer's word.

In short, I like the approach and the overall sense of the poem, but I think it needs more work. And I sympathize with you on working with those rhymes - I tried to make some more concrete quickie suggestions and got nowhere.

[David Callin]

Shers? Takhalluses? It's all Persian to me, Susan, but I enjoy the rhyming, which seems very much in a Lorenz Hart vein, and I like Lorenz Hart. (It's also the sort of theme that would have appealed to him.)

I agree with Michael about "Searching my nets". There's no crucial rhyming word in there, so hopefully you can easily find a better alternative. (You probably don't think you need a better alternative.)

I do like "Perhaps you've moved, packed up your cat and vanished". There's a whole personality sketched out in that.

I come back to the rhyming, though. Virtuosa stuff.

Cheers

David