Poetry for Beginners - Lesson 4

Diamante

In this lesson, we will be learning about the diamante style of poetry. I, for one, think that it's good for those who want to advance as a poet, as the rules are mildly strict. Prepare for another lesson!

The diamante is a style of poetry with seven lines and is in the shape of a diamond (diamante means diamond). It was developed by Iris Tiedt in "A New Poetry Form: The Diamante" (1969).  The diamante is a poem of opposites. There are different ways to do it, but I would appreciate if you would stick to the method presented in the lesson.

The format of a diamante is a little complicated, but easy enough to study in this class. The format is below.

Line 1-noun or subject (so basically your topic) *One word*
Line 2- two adjectives for noun/subject *Two words*
Line 3- three adjectives ending in "-ing" that describe your topic *Three words*
Line 4- two adjectives about topic, two about antonym/synonym of topic *Four words*
Line 5- three adjectives ending in "-ing" for antonym/synonym *Three words*
Line 6- two adjectives describing the antonym/synonym *Two words*
Line 7- antonym/synonym *One word*

Now to explain the format...

*Your diamante will be divided in half basically, 3 and 1/2 lines for your first topic (Line 1) and 3 and 1/2 lines for your second topic (Line 7).

*After you write your topic, it is important to then complete Line 7. You will need line 7 for lines 4, 5, and 6.

*You could write your diamante in two ways, and still get a diamond shape. You can use the center of a notebook page and put each line's text neatly under each other to create a diamond shape, or start from the edge, go horizontal for each line, and go one line beneath another and so on.

Here is an example of a diamante, written by me.

                                                                        Winter
                                                                Cold, beautiful
                                                      Touching, satisfying, amazing
                                       Wonderous, bewitching...warm, colorful
                                                       Exciting, amazing, amusing
                                                                  Fun, awesome
                                                                         Summer


It followed the format, thus leading to the diamond shape.

Here is a list of "-ing" adjectives, in case you get confused.

-exciting
-interesting
-amazing
-amusing
-satisfying
-touching
-fascinating
-fulfilling
-comforting
-boring
-pleasing
-calming
-exhausting
-soothing

How to Write a Diamante

Great! You've learned about the diamante, read an example, and got a list of words you could use. Now it's time to get going and write a diamante! Here are the steps.

1. Create a list of topics. Choose one, and write it down. This will be Line 1. Create a list of synonyms or antonyms for your topic, choose one, and write it down. This will be Line 7.

2. Create a list of adjectives, any adjectives. Choose two that describe your subject and write them down. This will be Line 2.

3. Choose three adjectives that end in "-ing" that describe your topic (there is a list on this page!). Write them down. This will be Line 3.

4. Create a list of adjectives that describe your synonym/antonym.

5. Look back at your list of adjectives for your first topic. Pick two, and write them down, then add "...".
Pick two adjectives from the list of adjectives describing your second topic, and write them down after the "...". All this should be in one line, which is Line 4.

6. Look back at your list of adjectives for your second topic, and pick three adjectives ending in "-ing", and write them down. This will be Line 5.

7. Look back at your list of adjectives for the second topic (again!). Choose two which describe your word for Line 7, and write them down. This will be Line 6.

8. Reread your poem and look for mistakes and edit until it is amazing!



That's all for the diamante. I hope you enjoyed learning about this dazzling type of poetry, and continue to write it.

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Poetry for Beginners - Lesson 3

Haiku
Greetings beginner poets! We have now reached our third lesson. From the title above I'm guessing you know we are going to discuss the haiku, and then you will head to your homework assignment. Are we clear? Okay, let us start!

The haiku is a style of poetry from Japan. It was originally used to write about nature.  Each verse has 3 lines and one verse has 17 moras, or syllables. The number of verses is unlimited, though a good number would be 3-4 verses. In one verse the first line is made up of five syllables, the second made of 7, and the third 5. Here is a visual format of a haiku.

5 syllables
7 syllables
5 syllables

5 syllables
7 syllables
5 syllables

...and so on.

Fast fact: In Japanese, a haiku is traditionally printed in a single vertical line. In English they appear in three lines, to parallel the three phrases of the Japanese haiku.

The haiku's name was given by the Japanese haiku writer Masaoka Shiki at the end of the 19th century.

When writing your haiku, do not use meaningless words such as I, the, a, it. You only have a limited number of syllables for each line so use meaningful words that fit in the syllable limit too. The haiku is your chance to be pensive in thinking and put the most meaningful things in your mind onto paper. A haiku is better for writing about nature, but you are always free to write a haiku for anything else.

Here are  examples of a haiku:
Examples

And here is a verse of one I wrote, called "Silence":

Nothing happening
Too quiet somewhere, not loud
Scary and haunting


How to Write a Haiku Now that you've looked at some examples of haiku (yes, you were supposed to click that link!) and learned about haiku in general, you should now learn how to write one. Follow the method below and see what magic comes out of your favorite pen or pencil!

Step 1:  Think about a theme for your haiku. After that, think of some words that come to mind, relate, and go well with your theme and write them down.

Step 2:  Organize your thoughts about your theme in three lines. First, set the scene, then expand on that by expressing a feeling, making an observation or recording an action. Keep it simple!

Step 3:  Polish your haiku into three lines, the first with 5 syllables, the second with 7 syllables, and the third with 5 syllables. It may take some time and substitution of words to make it fit.

Step 4: Repeat Steps 1-3 as you write more verses to your haiku.

I hope this method helps you write a haiku!

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Poetry for Beginners - Lesson 2

Couplet
Greetings young poets and welcome to your second lesson. Today, we are going to talk about the couplet. First I am going to tell you something about what a couplet is and how to write it, then you will proceed with you assignments. Alright, let us start!

A Couplet is a Stanza of only two. Shakespearean sonnets usually end in a couplet and are a pair of lines that are the same length and usually rhyme and form a complete thought. William Shakespeare makes use of couplets in more complex rhyme schemes. Most couplets rhyme (aa), but they do not have to only rhyme by end rhyming. In this case, if not rhyming by the end, it must rhyme at least in assonant rhyme style. In a couplet, the words you use to rhyme must sound close enough. Rhyming couplets are one of the simplest rhyme schemes in poetry.

Note: Think of a couplet as a part of song lyrics. The lyrics don't always rhyme, but they sound close enough to be known as a rhyme.

Couplets are used by many cultures. One of them is the colourful Chinese culture. Chinese couplets known as duilian may be seen on doorways in Chinese communities worldwide. They are displayed on the first morning of the New Year. They are usually purchased at a market a few days before and glued to the doorframe. The text of the Chinese couplets is often traditional and contains hopes for prosperity. Eight is considered a lucky number in Chinese tradition, so many Chinese couplets consists of two lines of four characters each. Couplets are often written vertically from top to bottom to add formality to their poetry.

There are also many variations of the couplet, based on line length and meter. Let us have a look at some.

 Short couplet – has iambic or trochaic tetrameter.

       Example:   Into my empty head there come
                         a cotton beach, a dock wherefrom

                               I set out, oily and nude
                               through mist in oily solitude.
                                                                 Maxine Kumin
Split couplet -  its first line is in iambic pentameter, the second in iambic dimeter.
           Example:          The weighty seas are rowled from the deeps
                                      In mighty heaps,
                                     And from the rocks' foundations do arise
                                     To kiss the skies.
                                                                    Richard Steere
 

Heroic couplet - two lines of iambic pentameter which are often the last two lines of the English sonnet.
            Example:          Such is my love, to thee I so belong,
                                        That for thy right myself will bear all wrong.
                                                                         William Shakespeare, Sonnet 88       
 Alexandrine Couplet – it is a line of iambic hexameter, so an alexandrine couplet is two rhymed lines of such. These often come at the end of stanzas or poems and, in these cases, are also called codas.

          Example:          A needless alexandrine ends the song

                                  that like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.

                                  

                                     Alexander Pope

                                                           

Fun fact: Couplets are the most common rhyme scheme in 'old school' rap and are still very commonly used in today's hip-hip music and rapping.

How to write a couplet:

Now that you have found something more about couplets in general, let's go to the imaginative part of this lesson. Yes, that is right! Writing time! Open your minds and let your thoughts fly on the paper. Writing a couplet is very easy, because you do not need to follow any specific rules, only that it needs to rhyme.

1. First, like always, think about what you'll write in your couplet. It can be anything, from nature to disasters.

 2. Now that you have what you are going to write about, think of how to put it into two lines and make it rhyme.

 3. Polish it around the edges and voila! Your couplet is done.

 4. You can add more stanzas to your couplet, using steps 1-3.

Goodbye class and don't forget to take your assignment on the way out!

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Poetry for Beginners - Lesson 1

 
Introduction to Poetry and Free-Style Poetry

So, here we are, our first lesson. In this lesson we will learn about poetry, free-style poetry, and talk about a few poets. Then, you will head on to your homework. And PLEASE, no sleeping!

First of all, what really IS poetry in the first place? Poetry is a style of writing that has thoughts, feelings, facts, opinions, etc. to state something true or just from the poet's point of view. Poetry can be about anything and can be written however you want. Some famous poets include William Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and for children, Jack Prelutsky, and Shel Silverstein.

And poetry doesn't have to rhyme, there are styles of poetry that don't require rhymes. Some poets rhyme to make their poems sound good. Others use vivid details or significant words. But as a poet you choose how to write poetry, and which style you will write the most often.

Have you ever heard or read a poem? What in the poem attracts reader?  How does the poet use certain words? How is the poem set up? You should identify poetry and it's traits. Some traits include: verses, strong words, vivid details, deep thought, and feelings. So when you write a poem, most of those traits should be identified in your poem.

Next step..what should your poem BE about? Try something that you enjoy, if you like dancing, write a poem about that! You are NOT limited to ideas! Be creative and something will come to mind. Just a note, in Japan a haiku was originally a poem about something related to nature, just in case you want inspiration for a haiku. Here are some "juicers":

*Your favorite pastime
*Something you hate
*The time you felt very upset and droopy
*Your favorite holiday
*A special treasure

There are many more ideas, as those are only a few. Keep in mind that a good poem starts with a good idea!


Free-Style Poetry
Free style poetry is our first style of poetry we will be studying in this class. There are no rules or format for this style of poetry. You can write about anything you want, however you want. Free style poetry is good for the poet who wants to follow their own rules and wants to be creative. You can even create a free style poem by mixing some traits of two different styles of poetry together! Doesn't that sound fun? Well, it is! You can follow this method to write a freestyle poem. First, read this example written by me:

Starry Night
Silver skies
Light the night
How peaceful
In the soul
Stars shine bright
Soar like a kite
In this simple beautiful night

Like it? Well, read on to find out how to write your own freestyle poem, it may even be better than mine!

1. Decide on a topic. If you can't think of any, think about your feelings. Are you angry, frustrated, annoyed? Why? How did it happen? If you have writers' block then use your feelings as a base.

2. After you decide on your topic, brainstorm a list of words related to your topic. For example, if my topic was "rain", I could put "wet". Another example, if my topic was being caught in sadness, I could put "looking for happiness". Try using a dictionary and/or a thesaurus for more words.

3. Choose your best words. Then add more language, meaning, and feelings to them.

4. Write a poem from your final list of words! Play around and see which word can fit where!

Try using the word "poem" whenever writing a poem:

Plan, start planning out your poem
Organize, sort out your brainstormed ideas
Enlighten, add some pizzazz to your poem
Master, make your poem the best it can be!


That's all for this lesson, now head on to your assignment!

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How to write love poems

To talk about this particular challenge, we take views of four poets about the art of the love poem, all of them poets who reinvent the subject not as lace and violets but as a shattered display window, “an ache and a kink,” “the black pulse of dominoes,” or “a bird/trapped in the terminal”—anything but what we’ve come to expect.

* * *

Adrian Blevins

What’s the most pressing challenge in approaching a love poem?
The trouble is not really the poetry but the feelings. We are raised on such cockamamie folklore that it’s all rather depressing when experience teaches us that the prince is not going to come riding in on his white horse. Oh, I’m not saying he doesn’t show up sometimes. But he’s not a prince, for one thing. And there’s no horse. And she’s not Cinderella either. Because, though he is fond of her cleavage and various things she might sometimes do or say, she’s got the worst taste in music he’s ever encountered. The problem with love poetry is that it must be felt and written by humans, who never feel one feeling at a time. I mean, love has fear in it. And guilt and misery and a special kind of hallucinating loneliness (says James Wright). The problem for the poet is how to get such a hodgepodge into one coherent space.

Where do you think most bad love poems go astray?
The trouble, again, is not the poetry but the heart. Even people who are trained to tell whatever truth is at hand have a hard time expressing this truth because, for one thing, they are so unknowing. I mean, we don’t really understand ourselves. We try and we try, but we’re a work in progress and mere mortals besides. Bad love poetry is bad because it is trite. Triteness is bad because it’s untrue, and untrueness is bad because it is a waste of time and energy and, somehow, unjust.

As a younger poet, did you ever fumble with the bad, saccharine attempts at love poems that most of us write? What can we learn from those fumbles?
The difficulty of being a young poet is not only or even mainly the problem of being an inexperienced line or image or metaphor maker, for these are problems a devotion to the tradition can fix. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the problem with the young poet is that she’s an inexperienced feeler. So she makes all kinds of mistakes with people. Mostly herself. I have indeed written the most hackneyed and hideous love poems imaginable. Abstract, yes, and if not full of purple flowers, full of something bad, anyway—somebody kneeling in front of somebody else holding some kind of ridiculous object! I think the most important thing any poet or writer can do to improve his or her odds of writing a good poem of any type is to learn continuously how to pay attention. Poetry is not about how we feel, of course. It’s about how we feel about how we feel. Knowing how we feel about how we feel requires an almost ungodly attentiveness or consciousness—an otherworldly watchfulness and vigilance. As does—maybe? —love?

The Way She Figured He Figured It

You get over these constant storms and learn to be married all over again, every day.
                              —Barry Hannah

The foyer is hers because the kettle is hers as it was made for water and the water is hers
                 because the sac that grew the baby was hers though the semen that made the sac was his
                                         like his boots are his and the tea that’s of the kettle

after it enters his mouth is his unless it’s hers since it’s inside the kitchen that’s hers

and therefore not his unless he’s simmering the Asian sauces that are his
                 because they’re dense and knotty rather than milkish and paltry
                                         like everything else from the nation state of the motherland

of the no-mercy child who won’t stop sucking and wanting and whining in the ear that is his

although the child herself belongs somehow to the woman and thus its hunger is hers
                 as is the bed and dresser and mirror and latch
                                         though the hammer naturally is his and the saw and lumber

and back and muscle he suffered to build because he guessed he thought it would be

good for something besides this house like a pestilence of people who weren’t his
                 because nothing was his except the whirl he carried in his belly of the mix-up
                                         of loving her in the first place

like being sucked into a burrow of lava embers and putting your tongue to it until it caught fire

and all he could say was that the burn was his—this hole in the mouth—
                 this fiasco of the woman bent now in the garden to smell the cilantro
                                         as though she didn’t know his head was split

with hating her and loving her and hating her and loving her

because she was an ache and a kink and somehow the furrow—the groove and the rut—
                 and age and death and kiss and fuck and not-fuck and song and not-song
                                         and no it was not sweet though he’d go on and carry it

                                                          since also—since mostly—it was.

“The Way She Figured He Figured It” was originally published in The American Poetry Review.

Adrian Blevins’s The Brass Girl Brouhaha (Ausable Press, 2003) won the 2004 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Blevins is also the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Foundation Award, a Bright Hill Press Chapbook Award for The Man Who Went Out for Cigarettes, and the Lamar York Prize for Nonfiction. A new book, Live from the Homesick Jamboree, is forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press. Blevins teaches at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

* * *

Rebecca Hoogs

What’s the most pressing challenge in approaching a love poem?
The most pressing challenge is to not write only love poems. I feel like I don’t approach love poems; they approach me. Usually I’m trying to avoid them, like at a party. When forced to confront them, when it’s just the two of us left at the long, picked-over buffet table, I try my hardest to counter cliché and easy sentimentality. This is why I took the approach of confronting cliché head-on in “Another Plot Cliché.” When love itself is a cliché, and almost every metaphor for it feels spent, the only approach is to turn those clichés inside out, push them so far that they explode and hopefully turn into something. The etymology of “cliché” traces back to “stamped in metal.” I want to turn our contemporary abstractions back into their original concrete (or metal) states.

Where do you think most bad love poems go astray?
There are so many places a bad love poem can go astray! Taking the poem or yourself too seriously is dangerous. Or they go astray when the author isn’t willing to find the edge. A good love poem lives in a tense state. If there’s no tension in the love, there’s no tension in the poem. “I love you, you’re perfect,” no matter how prettily said, is boring.

Is there a difference between a “love poem” and a poem about love?
Here’s a theory: what if “love poems” are poems that are in the thick of love, first blush, white-hot? In a love poem, the love still comes first. And perhaps a poem about love is less about the feeling than the relationship. It’s about the work that goes into making love still a feeling. A poem about love is always trying to get back to being a love poem, but there’s that tension again.

Another Plot Cliché

My dear, you are the high-speed car chase, and I,
I am the sheet of glass being carefully carried
across the street by two employees of Acme Moving
who have not parked on the right side
because the plot demands that they make
the perilous journey across traffic,
and so they are cursing as rehearsed
as they angle me into the street, acting as if
they intend to get me to the department store, as if
I will ever take my place as the display window, ever clear
the way for a special exhibit at Christmas, or be windexed
once a day, or even late at night, be pressed against
by a couple who can’t make it back to his place,
and so they angle me into the street, a bright lure,
a provocative claim, their teaser, and indeed
you can’t resist my arguments, fatally flawed
though they are, so you come careening to but and butt
and rebut, you come careening, you being
both cars, both chaser and chased, both good and bad, both
done up with bullets that haven’t yet done you in.
I know I’m done for: there’s only one street
on this set and you’ve got a stubborn streak a mile long.
I can smell the smoke already.
No matter, I’d rather shatter
than be looked through all day. So come careening; I know
you’ve other clichés to hammer home: women with groceries
to send spilling, canals to leap as the bridge is rising.
And me? I’m so through. I’ve got a thousand places to be.

“Another Plot Cliché” was originally published in Poetry.

Rebecca Hoogs is the author of a chapbook, Grenade (2005), and her poems have appeared in Poetry, AGNI, Crazyhorse, Zyzzyva, The Journal, Poetry Northwest, The Florida Review, and others. She is the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony (2004) and Artist Trust of Washington State (2005). She is the Director of Education Programs and the curator and host of the Poetry Series for Seattle Arts & Lectures.

* * *

Cyrus Cassells

What’s the most pressing challenge in approaching a love poem?
The most pressing concern is conveying intimacy without shutting the reader out of the ecstatic feelings limned in a love poem—to give just enough information without lapsing into a dynamic akin to voyeurism and exhibitionism.

Where do you think most bad love poems go astray?
Bad love poems usually go into gauzy “soft focus,” ignore revealing details, and refuse to accurately and specifically portray real intimacy or the Beloved.

Is there a distinct aesthetic for a queer poet writing about love?
My goal in my homoerotic book of love poems, Beautiful Signor, was to claim traditional romantic tropes, primarily from the troubadour and Sufi traditions, for the gay community, to testify that we have “moons and Junes” as well. I wanted to create a springtime “garden” that straight people could walk into, too, and feel at home. So no, I don’t think there’s necessarily a distinct aesthetic, but I do believe that a queer poet writes with a keen sense of how love is often hindered or even imperiled by society’s and the traditional family’s rampant fears and prejudices.

Beautiful Signor


All dreams of the soul
End in a beautiful man’s or woman’s body.
—Yeats, “The Phases of the Moon”


Whenever we wake,
still joined, enraptured—
at the window,
each clear night’s finish
the black pulse of dominoes
dropping to land;

whenever we embrace,
haunted, upwelling,
I know
a reunion is taking place—

Hear me when I say
our love’s not meant to be
an opiate;
helpmate,
you are the reachable mirror
that dares me to risk
the caravan back
to the apogee, the longed-for
arms of the Beloved—


Dusks of paperwhites,
dusks of jasmine,
intimate beyond belief

beautiful Signor

no dread of nakedness

beautiful Signor

my long ship,
my opulence,
my garland

beautiful Signor

extinguishing the beggar’s tin,
the wind of longing

beautiful Signor

laving the ruined country,
the heart wedded to war

beautiful Signor

the kiln-blaze
in my body,
the turning heaven

beautiful Signor

you cover me with pollen

beautiful Signor

into your sweet mouth—

This is the taproot:
against all strictures,
desecrations,
I’ll never renounce,
never relinquish
the first radiance, the first
moment you took my hand—

This is the endless wanderlust:
dervish,
yours is the April-upon-April love
that kept me spinning even beyond
your eventful arms
toward the unsurpassed:

the one vast claiming heart,
the glimmering,
the beautiful and revealed Signor.

Beautiful Signor was published by Copper Canyon Press in 1997.


Cyrus Cassells is the author of four acclaimed books of poetry: The Mud Actor, Soul Make a Path through Shouting, Beautiful Signor, and More Than Peace and Cypresses. His fifth book, The Crossed-Out Swastika, is forthcoming in 2010 from Copper Canyon Press. Among his honors are a Lannan Literary Award, a Lambda Literary Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, two NEA grants, and a Pushcart Prize. He is a professor of English at Texas State University–San Marcos.

* * *

Craig Arnold

What’s the most pressing challenge in approaching a love poem?
For a poet at the beginning of the 21st century, I think the most difficult thing is how to navigate this brave new world, where we’re in the midst of making up our collective mind about what it means to be men and women. In the Western tradition most love poems have assumed a male poet writing to or about a female object, who can accept or refuse the offering but who doesn’t otherwise say much, and the formal conventions of poetry have crystallized around that assumption. There are those wonderful Provençal troubadour poems that imagine the poem as a dialogue, a back-and-forth between two mutually desiring individuals, but those are among the few exceptions. Now when we sit down to write poems to our lovers—or to the people we hope will be our lovers—we’re more likely to be thinking: What am I responding to? How do I hope this person will respond? How is this part of an ongoing conversation? With “Bird-Understander” I wanted to say not, as an Elizabethan courtly sonneteer might have said, “Look, I made your words into poetry, aren’t I fabulous?” but rather “Listen, what you said to me, it’s already poetry, better than anything I could write, and it would make me happy simply to have you see that.”

Where do you think most bad love poems go astray?
Any love poem has to strike a careful balance between the particular and the common. As a lover you feel as though you and your beloved are the most intensely particular people in the world—“Never again a love like this,” as Roddy Lumdsen says. But the fact is that you’re submitting yourself to what is possibly the most common or universal human experience, and that sometimes the most direct and most accurate expression of that experience may, in fact, be the language of cliché. I’m thinking about the duet that Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman sing on the rooftop in Moulin Rouge, which is just a pastiche of trashy pop songs, and in some way that’s what all love poetry is leaning toward. But when you think about [it], what is a cliché, if not a poem that won? We feel that so many love poems are bad, or clichéd, but I suspect that what we dislike about them are not the clichés, but the experience of being in love itself. As poets we like to think that we’re original, and it embarrasses us to remember how utterly unoriginal we can be—the sudden appeal of the corniest things, the mood swings, the crying at movies and the like. Let’s face it, nobody in love is original. We all feel and do pretty much the same things, make fools of ourselves in the same ways, and hopefully come through it alive and well and happily in bed with someone else. But that’s also precisely the appeal of love poetry, the intensely humbling nature of the experience it tries to describe.

As a younger poet, did you ever fumble with the bad, saccharine attempts at love poems that most of us write? What can we learn from those fumbles?
It’s hard to say. I came into my writerly existence in the 1980s, the Decade of Irony, when it was very uncool to express any sort of strong feeling directly or plainly. If you wanted to be taken seriously as a writer, you learned to police yourself for any signs of sincerity, to cloak them in irony and diffidence and perhaps a certain obscurity. A while ago, my first lover sent me a copy of a poem I wrote when I was maybe 19, and what strikes me about it now is, though I clearly meant it as a gesture of love, I didn’t frame it as such. Rather than I addressing you, it was all in the third person, a sketch of a character from a noir novel, a sort of Philip Marlowe–like individual smoking underneath a window. It was a stealth love poem, a meta–love poem, a sort of “I have this friend who’s in love with you” kind of poem. The habit of indirection was already very strong in me, as it was with other poets of that era. So I think the danger then was actually not being too saccharine, but rather of being too cool, too frigid. Now the danger is probably being too caffeinated—I’m thinking of the maniacally antic poems of the New New New York School, whatever generation of that we’re on now. So one can fumble by being too cool, and one can fumble by burying the truth of one’s feeling under a heap of jagged and jarring images. I think Creeley, of all people, was able to hit the right note, plain and plaintive and wistful and awkward—what he brings out is the awful hesitancy of that moment where you’re holding out this little offering to somebody else and hoping to hear Yes I said yes I will yes. And what you’re risking is a certain kind of sentimentality. But for my money, I think it’s better to risk the sentimental and fail, than aim for frigidity and succeed.

Bird-Understander

Of many reasons I love you here is one

the way you write me from the gate at the airport
so I can tell you everything will be alright

so you can tell me there is a bird
trapped in the terminal    all the people
ignoring it    because they do not know
what do with it    except to leave it alone
until it scares itself to death

it makes you terribly terribly sad

You wish you could take the bird outside
and set it free or    (failing that)
call a bird-understander
to come help the bird

All you can do is notice the bird
and feel for the bird    and write
to tell me how language feels
impossibly useless

but you are wrong

You are a bird-understander
better than I could ever be
who make so many noises
and call them song

These are your own words
your way of noticing
and saying plainly
of not turning away
from hurt

you have offered them
to me    I am only
giving them back

if only I could show you
how very useless
they are not

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Some hindi romantic poems

Hello friends today i am posting some of the romantic hindi poems this will help you if you are interested in writing these types of poems . Hope this post is useful for all of you .

मुझे पुकार लो - Poem by Harivansh Rai Bachchan

इसीलिए खड़ा रहा कि तुम मुझे पुकार लो!

ज़मीन है न बोलती न आसमान बोलता,
जहान देखकर मुझे नहीं जबान खोलता,
नहीं जगह कहीं जहाँ न अजनबी गिना गया,
कहाँ-कहाँ न फिर चुका दिमाग-दिल टटोलता,
कहाँ मनुष्य है कि जो उमीद छोड़कर जिया,
इसीलिए खड़ा रहा कि तुम मुझे पुकार लो

इसीलिए खड़ा रहा कि तुम मुझे पुकार लो!

तिमिर-समुद्र कर सकी न पार नेत्र की तरी,
विनष्ट स्वप्न से लदी, विषाद याद से भरी,
न कूल भूमि का मिला, न कोर भोर की मिली,
न कट सकी, न घट सकी विरह-घिरी विभावरी,
कहाँ मनुष्य है जिसे कमी खली न प्यार की,
इसीलिए खड़ा रहा कि तुम मुझे दुलार लो!

इसीलिए खड़ा रहा कि तुम मुझे पुकार लो!

उजाड़ से लगा चुका उमीद मैं बहार की,
निदघ से उमीद की बसंत के बयार की,
मरुस्थली मरीचिका सुधामयी मुझे लगी,
अंगार से लगा चुका उमीद मै तुषार की,
कहाँ मनुष्य है जिसे न भूल शूल-सी गड़ी
इसीलिए खड़ा रहा कि भूल तुम सुधार लो!

इसीलिए खड़ा रहा कि तुम मुझे पुकार लो!
पुकार कर दुलार लो, दुलार कर सुधार लो!

था तुम्हें मैंने रुलाया! - Poem by Harivansh Rai Bachchan

 हा, तुम्हारी मृदुल इच्छा!
हाय, मेरी कटु अनिच्छा!
था बहुत माँगा ना तुमने किन्तु वह भी दे ना पाया!
था तुम्हें मैंने रुलाया!

स्नेह का वह कण तरल था,
मधु न था, न सुधा-गरल था,
एक क्षण को भी, सरलते, क्यों समझ तुमको न पाया!
था तुम्हें मैंने रुलाया!

बूँद कल की आज सागर,
सोचता हूँ बैठ तट पर -
क्यों अभी तक डूब इसमें कर न अपना अंत पाया!
था तुम्हें मैंने रुलाया! 

 

क्षण भर को क्यों प्यार किया था? - Poem by Harivansh Rai Bachchan

 अर्द्ध रात्रि में सहसा उठकर,
पलक संपुटों में मदिरा भर,
तुमने क्यों मेरे चरणों में अपना तन-मन वार दिया था?
क्षण भर को क्यों प्यार किया था?

‘यह अधिकार कहाँ से लाया!'
और न कुछ मैं कहने पाया -
मेरे अधरों पर निज अधरों का तुमने रख भार दिया था!
क्षण भर को क्यों प्यार किया था?

वह क्षण अमर हुआ जीवन में,
आज राग जो उठता मन में -
यह प्रतिध्वनि उसकी जो उर में तुमने भर उद्गार दिया था!
क्षण भर को क्यों प्यार किया था?

 

जिसकी धुन पर दुनिया नाचे - Poem by Kumar Vishwas

 जिसकी धुन पर दुनिया नाचे, दिल ऐसा इकतारा है,
जो हमको भी प्यारा है और, जो तुमको भी प्यारा है.
झूम रही है सारी दुनिया, जबकि हमारे गीतों पर,
तब कहती हो प्यार हुआ है, क्या अहसान तुम्हारा है.

जो धरती से अम्बर जोड़े , उसका नाम मोहब्बत है ,
जो शीशे से पत्थर तोड़े , उसका नाम मोहब्बत है ,
कतरा कतरा सागर तक तो ,जाती है हर उम्र मगर ,
बहता दरिया वापस मोड़े , उसका नाम मोहब्बत है .

पनाहों में जो आया हो, तो उस पर वार क्या करना ?
जो दिल हारा हुआ हो, उस पे फिर अधिकार क्या करना ?
मुहब्बत का मज़ा तो डूबने की कशमकश में हैं,
जो हो मालूम गहराई, तो दरिया पार क्या करना ?

बस्ती बस्ती घोर उदासी पर्वत पर्वत खालीपन,
मन हीरा बेमोल बिक गया घिस घिस रीता तनचंदन,
इस धरती से उस अम्बर तक दो ही चीज़ गज़ब की है,
एक तो तेरा भोलापन है एक मेरा दीवानापन.

तुम्हारे पास हूँ लेकिन जो दूरी है समझता हूँ,
तुम्हारे बिन मेरी हस्ती अधूरी है समझता हूँ,
तुम्हे मै भूल जाऊँगा ये मुमकिन है नही लेकिन,
तुम्ही को भूलना सबसे ज़रूरी है समझता हूँ

बहुत बिखरा बहुत टूटा थपेड़े सह नहीं पाया,
हवाओं के इशारों पर मगर मैं बह नहीं पाया,
अधूरा अनसुना ही रह गया यूं प्यार का किस्सा,
कभी तुम सुन नहीं पायी, कभी मैं कह नहीं पाया

तुम्हे मैं प्यार नहीं दे पाऊँगा - Poem by Kumar Vishwas

 ओ कल्पव्रक्ष की सोनजुही!
ओ अमलताश की अमलकली!
धरती के आतप से जलते..
मन पर छाई निर्मल बदली..
मैं तुमको मधुसदगन्ध युक्त संसार नहीं दे पाऊँगा|
तुम मुझको करना माफ तुम्हे मैं प्यार नहीं दे पाऊँगा||
तुम कल्पव्रक्ष का फूल और
मैं धरती का अदना गायक
तुम जीवन के उपभोग योग्य
मैं नहीं स्वयं अपने लायक
तुम नहीं अधूरी गजल शुभे
तुम शाम गान सी पावन हो
हिम शिखरों पर सहसा कौंधी
बिजुरी सी तुम मनभावन हो.
इसलिये व्यर्थ शब्दों वाला व्यापार नहीं दे पाऊँगा|
तुम मुझको करना माफ तुम्हे मैं प्यार नहीं दे पाऊँगा||
तुम जिस शय्या पर शयन करो
वह क्षीर सिन्धु सी पावन हो
जिस आँगन की हो मौलश्री
वह आँगन क्या वृन्दावन हो
जिन अधरों का चुम्बन पाओ
वे अधर नहीं गंगातट हों
जिसकी छाया बन साथ रहो
वह व्यक्ति नहीं वंशीवट हो
पर मैं वट जैसा सघन छाँह विस्तार नहीं दे पाऊँगा|
तुम मुझको करना माफ तुम्हे मैं प्यार नहीं दे पाऊँगा||
मै तुमको चाँद सितारों का
सौंपू उपहार भला कैसे
मैं यायावर बंजारा साधू
सुर श्रृंगार भला कैसे
मैन जीवन के प्रश्नों से नाता तोड तुम्हारे साथ शुभे
बारूद बिछी धरती पर कर लूँ
दो पल प्यार भला कैसे
इसलिये विवश हर आँसू को सत्कार नहीं दे पाऊँगा|
तुम मुझको करना माफ तुम्हे मैं प्यार नहीं दे पाऊँगा|| 

 

 

 मैं तुम्हें ढूँढने स्वर्ग के द्वार तक - Poem by Kumar Vishwas

 मैं तुम्हें ढूँढने स्वर्ग के द्वार तक
रोज आता रहा, रोज जाता रहा
तुम ग़ज़ल बन गई, गीत में ढल गई
मंच से में तुम्हें गुनगुनाता रहा

जिन्दगी के सभी रास्ते एक थे
सबकी मंजिल तुम्हारे चयन तक गई
अप्रकाशित रहे पीर के उपनिषद्
मन की गोपन कथाएँ नयन तक रहीं
प्राण के पृष्ठ पर गीत की अल्पना
तुम मिटाती रही मैं बनाता रहा
तुम ग़ज़ल बन गई, गीत में ढल गई
मंच से में तुम्हें गुनगुनाता रहा

एक खामोश हलचल बनी जिन्दगी
गहरा ठहरा जल बनी जिन्दगी
तुम बिना जैसे महलों में बीता हुआ
उर्मिला का कोई पल बनी जिन्दगी
दृष्टि आकाश में आस का एक दिया
तुम  बुझती  रही, मैं  जलाता  रहा
तुम ग़ज़ल बन गई, गीत में ढल गई
मंच से में तुम्हें गुनगुनाता रहा

तुम चली गई तो मन अकेला हुआ
सारी यादों का पुरजोर मेला हुआ
कब भी लौटी नई खुशबुओं में सजी
मन भी बेला हुआ तन भी बेला हुआ
खुद के आघात पर व्यर्थ की बात पर
रूठती तुम रही मैं मानता रहा
तुम ग़ज़ल बन गई, गीत में ढल गई
मंच से में तुम्हें गुनगुनाता रहा
मैं तुम्हें ढूँढने स्वर्ग के द्वार तक
रोज आता रहा, रोज जाता रहा 

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Famous, Romantic English Love Poems

As long as there have been poets, there have been love poems. After all, if love cannot inspire, what can? Our minds turn to love on special anniversaries, Valentine’s Day and weddings, but how to express it? We are not all blessed with the gift of poetic words. The list below may include a romantic love poems for him or a love poem for her to serve the occasion but don’t pretend it’s yours. You will look very foolish when you are found out. But love tends to do that to us anyway.

 

10. ‘Wild Nights’ by Emily Dickinson

A leading American poet (1830 – 1836), she is one of the most accessible and popular poets. This selection is not typical of her output and is surprisingly passionate for a woman of those times. Dickinson led a secluded life and it’s not certain for whom these lines were intended, ‘might I but moor tonight with thee’. Biographers believe that she may have created a fantasy for herself. But this may also have been a love poem for a man.

Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.
Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!

 

9. ‘We Are Made One with What We Touch and See’ by Oscar Wilde

Of course, it’s well known that Wilde’s romantic exploits got him into trouble, resulting in a two-year sentence for hard labour.  He’s better known for his comedic plays and witty quotes than for his poems. This poem has the joyful line; ‘we draw the spring into our hearts and feel that life is good’. Read the full poem.

We Are Made One with What We Touch and See
by Oscar Wilde

We are resolved into the supreme air,
We are made one with what we touch and see,
With our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair,
With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree
Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range
The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.

With beat of systole and of diastole
One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart,
And mighty waves of single Being roll
From nerve-less germ to man, for we are part
Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,
One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill. . . .

One sacrament are consecrate, the earth
Not we alone hath passions hymeneal,
The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth
At daybreak know a pleasure not less real
Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood
We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good. . . .

Is the light vanished from our golden sun,
Or is this daedal-fashioned earth less fair,
That we are nature's heritors, and one
With every pulse of life that beats the air?
Rather new suns across the sky shall pass,
New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass.

And we two lovers shall not sit afar,
Critics of nature, but the joyous sea
Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star
Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be
Part of the mighty universal whole,
And through all Aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul!

We shall be notes in that great Symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
And all the live World's throbbing heart shall be
One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years
Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,
The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!

 

8. ‘Bright Star’ by John Keats

A leading figure amongst the English Romantic poets, many of Keats’ poems are melancholic. He was a doomed man, dying of TB at the age of 26 in a house in Rome where he had gone to improve his health. The house, next to the Spanish Steps, is now a museum dedicated to his life and the life of Shelley. He wrote his poetry in a brief five-year period. Sensual love is celebrated in the line, ‘pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast’.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art–
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors–
No–yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever–or else swoon to death.

 

7. ‘Another Valentine’ by Wendy Cope

This is from the point of view of a couple that have been together a long time. At first, Cope seems slightly resentful that she is being forced into making a romantic declaration just because a certain date in the calendar demands it, but she gets into the spirit of the occasion and her love for her man shines through. They are sure of each other, as shown by ‘you know I’m yours and I know you are mine’. It is more difficult to find love poems for him, but “Another Valentine” is just that.

Today we are obliged to be romantic
And think of yet another valentine.
We know the rules and we are both pedantic:
Today’s the day we have to be romantic.
Our love is old and sure, not new and frantic.
You know I’m yours and I know you are mine.
And saying that has made me feel romantic,
My dearest love, my darling valentine.

 

6. ‘A Drinking Song’ by W.B. Yeats

The title does not suggest a love poem and it’s debatable as to how much alcohol consumption is playing a part! Nevertheless, it is a romantic poem. The opening lines are ‘wine comes in at the mouth and love comes in at the eye’ Let’s hope they don’t regret it in the morning.

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

5. ‘Valentine’ by John Fuller

Perhaps the least well known poet on the list, he is an English writer, born in 1937, and is the son of the feted poet, Roy Fuller. This is a sensual poem, which celebrates the physical features of his beloved; ‘I like it when you tilt your cheek up’.  It’s a gently teasing poem with fun lines such as ‘I’d like to find you in the shower and chase the soap for half an hour’. Read the full poem.

The things about you I appreciate may seem indelicate:
I’d like to find you in the shower
And chase the soap for half an hour.
I’d like to have you in my power and see your eyes dilate.
I’d like to have your back to scour
And other parts to lubricate.
Sometimes I feel it is my fate
To chase you screaming up a tower or make you cower
By asking you to differentiate Nietzsche from Schopenhauer.
I’d like to successfully guess your weight and win you at a féte.
I’d like to offer you a flower.

 

4. ‘Love Is’ by Adrian Henri

The late Henri, along with his fellow Liverpool poets, Roger McGough and Brian Patten, brought poetry to a new generation in their 1967 anthology, ‘The Mersey Sound’. It’s a poem about everyday love between everyday people but is strangely touching. ‘Love is a fan club with only two fans’ and ‘love is what happens when the music stops’.

Love is…
Love is feeling cold in the back of vans
Love is a fanclub with only two fans
Love is walking holding paintstained hands
Love is.
Love is fish and chips on winter nights
Love is blankets full of strange delights
Love is when you don’t put out the light
Love is
Love is the presents in Christmas shops
Love is when you’re feeling Top of the Pops
Love is what happens when the music stops
Love is
Love is white panties lying all forlorn
Love is pink nightdresses still slightly warm
Love is when you have to leave at dawn
Love is
Love is you and love is me
Love is prison and love is free
Love’s what’s there when you are away from me
Love is…

 

3. ‘How Do I Love Thee’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Browning had the advantage of a good education, not given to most Victorian women in England. She blossomed as a poet and found love with fellow writer, Robert Browning. They married against her father’s wishes and eloped to Italy. It doesn’t get any more romantic than that. The opening lines to this romantic love poem are often quoted; ‘how do I love thee, let me count the ways’.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

 

2. ‘A Red, Red Rose’ by Robert Burns

This is both a poem and a song, first published in 1794. Burns is one of the most famous Scotsmen in the world and the anniversary of his birth, January 25th, is celebrated around the world with recitations, whiskey and haggis (for those that can stomach it). Burns Night undoubtedly features this romantic poem and the lines, ‘O, my love is like a red, red, rose, that is newly sprung in June’.

O my Luve’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June:
O my Luve’s like the melodie,
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!
And fare-thee-weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ ’twere ten thousand mile!

 

1. ‘Love Sonnet 130’ by William Shakespeare

The most revered playwright in history also found time to compose 154 sonnets, published in 1609. The sonnets are a great source for quotations on the theme of romance, love and passion. He was constantly preoccupied with the relationships between men and women in his writing. Number 130 glories in lines, such as ‘and yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare as any she belied with false compare’.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
   And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
   As any she belied with false compare. 

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Basic Structure of Hindi Poetry Part 4

This is Part 4, the last part of our article series on the basic structure of Hindi poetry. This part gives a brief description of Urdu poetry and has been included here due to the close inter-relationship between Hindi and Urdu poetry.
1. Introduction
In this part, we talk of Urdu poetry against the backdrop of Hindi poetry. This article is a simple description of Urdu poetry as relevant to Hindi poetry. No attempt is made to give a detailed or complete account of Urdu poetry, for which the readers may consult an appropriate book.

Urdu poetry in the present form really started in the 18th century with Meer Taqi Meer. Some of the greatest developments started in the 19th century with great poets like Ghalib and Momin, who gave shape to modern Urdu poetry. Technically, Amir Khusro is regarded as the pioneer of Urdu or Hindi poetry but his style and craft have been adopted more in Hindi poetry and not so much in Urdu poetry. In contrast to contemporary Hindi poetry, mukt-kavita or azaad-nazm is not very common in Urdu. The most common styles used in Urdu poetry are ghazal, qataa, rubaayee and nazm.


2. Styles of Urdu Poetry
A nazm is a poem that can have any structure. It corresponds to kavita in Hindi and consists of units. A naghma is a geet or nazm that one sings. The main and perhaps the only forms of chhand in Urdu are sher (couplet), and qataa (chatushpadee/four-liners). The plural of sher is ashaar and the plural of qataa isqataat. A qataa that follows a specific structure of rhyme and meter, would be a rubaayee. We will describe the rules for rubaayee later. All forms - sher,qataa, and rubaayee must follow specific rules of rhyme and meter.

Azaad-nazm or mukt-kavita still does not seem to be very common in Urdu. The poet who pioneered azaad-nazm in Urdu was Noon Meem Rashid. We will not talk of aazaad-nazm except for quoting one stanza of his famous poem, possibly the first azaad-nazm of Urdu:

ऐ मेरी हमरक्स
मुझको थाम ले|
ज़िंदगी से भाग कर आया हूँ मैं|
डर से लरज़ा हूँ
कहीं ऐसा न हो
रक्सगह के चोर दरवाज़े से आकर ज़िंदगी
ढूंढ ले मुझको,
निशान पा ले मेरा
और जुर्मे ऐश करते देख ले|

हमरक्स: dancing-partner
लरज़ा: tremble
रक्सगह: dance hall


3. Rhyming nomenclature in Urdu
Before anything, let us identify the nomenclature and the rules of rhyme (tuk ) that are rather strict, almost non-negotiable in Urdu. Rhyme / tuk is calledkaafiyaa (क़ाफिया) in Urdu. The rules of kaafiyaa are exactly the same as for tuk in Hindi, that was defined in Part 1. At least the last letter must be same in the rhyming lines. The 'common' part can be a letter, a word or even a phrase (a sub-clause). The common letter or word or phrase is called radeef (रदीफ़). Further, and this is very important and non-negotiable, the descent to radeef in the rhyming lines must be identical. It means that the sounds (vowels) preceding the radeef must match. Some people ignore this rule and kill the basic charm of a couplet. They would have radeef - common word/phrase but not match the kaafiyaa of the preceding vowels. For illustration, here is a Ghalib’s couplet: 

Example:
कोई उम्मीद बर नहीं आती
कोई सूरत नज़र नहीं आती 

बर, ज़र: काफिया
नहीं आती: रदीफ़

4. Sher
The most common and a very beautiful form of Urdu poetry is sher. The main characteristic of a sher is that it is, in general, self-contained, and makes a complete statement. In that sense it is similar to Hindi dohaa and Persian couplet.

Let us consider examples of dohaa and Persian couplets:

दोहा (तुलसीदास):
आवत ही हर्षे नहीं, नयनन नहीं सनेह|
तुलसी तहां न जाइए, कंचन बरसे मेह||

रहीम:
जो रहीम ओछो बढे, तो अति ही इतराये|
प्यादे ते फर्जी भयो, टेढो टेढो जाये||

The dohaas of Ramcharitmaanas are parts of an extended poem (epic) and, in that sense, not independent. Yet, often they can be a complete statement in themselves. Such as:

वारि मथे घृत होय बरु, सिकता ते बरु तेल|
बिनु हरि भजे न भव तरहि, यहु सिद्धांत अपेल||

This is in Avadhi. वारि = पानी; बरु = संभव; सिकता = बालू; अपेल = जिसका अपवाद न हो or unbreakable. Full meaning of the dohaa - It may be possible to get ghee by stirring water. It may be even possible to extract oil out of sand, but बिना हरि भजे भवसागर से तर नहीं सकते (no way to express this in English); this 'theorem' or 'principle' has no exception.

Note two characteristics of dohaa: Both the lines rhyme- "saneh", "meh" in the first dohaa. In the second dohaa, ‘itraaye’ and ‘jaaye’ rhyme. Similarly ‘tel’ and ‘apel’ rhyme in the third one. It is very common, to have the poet's name in the first or second line of dohaas. The poet's name is not used in most of Raamcharitmanas dohaas because they are parts of a running story. The most important thing is that a dohaa has a very specific meter as you can feel from all the three quoted above. This meter is universally followed with no exceptions.

Now let us consider two Persian couplets:

बर मज़ारे मा गरीबां, नै चिरागे, नै गुले
नै परे परवाना सोज़द, नै सदाये बुलबुले.

Meaning: मुझ गरीब की मज़ार पर, न चिराग है, न फूल| न परवाने के परों (के जलने) की आवाज़ आती है और न बुल बुल की सदा| 

This couplet was written by Jahaanaara (Aurangzeb's sister), who wrote poetry secretly. Aurangzeb, did not allow writing poetry. It is curious how a princess could be so sad and depressed. Most of her poems are in a very sad mood. There are legends about her lost love that may be reflected in her poems.

One more Persian example (we don't know the name of the poet, but it is a classic) :

आहिस्ता बर्गे गुल बफिशां बर मज़ार मा;
बस नाज़ुकस्तशीशए दिल दरकनार मा.

Meaning: मेरी मज़ार पर फूल धीरे से चढ़ाना; ऐसा न हो कि मेरा शीशे जैसा नाज़ुक दिल टूट जाये (दरार पड़ जाये).

We have quoted these two Persian couplets for two reasons just to show how they are adopted in Urdu poetry. Historically, Persian poetry preceded Hindi poetry. It had couplets like dohaa but the meter is entirely different. Now you can see the effect of Persian poetry on a typical Urdu sher. In addition to the structure of the sher, concepts like mazaar par phool chadhaanaa, sheeshe jaisaa naazuk dil, are still used in Urdu poetry.

Now, in the backdrop of the dohaa and Persian couplets, let us see a beautiful sher by Momin:

तुम हमारे किसी तरह न हुए, वरना दुनिया में क्या नहीं होता.
तुम मेरे पास होते हो गोया, जब कोई दूसरा नहीं होता.

Radeef: "नहीं होता". Kaafiyaa: "क्या" and "दूसरा". 

This sher was Ghalib's favorite. He said to Momin, "आप मेरा सारा दीवान ले लें, और यह शेर मुझे दे दें". Someone like Ghalib could not give a better compliment to a fellow poet. Another beauty by Momin is given below. 

मैं तो इक अश्के-नदामत के सिवा कुछ भी नहीं, 
तुम अगर चाहो तो पलकों पे बिठा लो मुझको. 
(अश्के-नदामत= पश्चाताप का आंसू)

In some versions it is quoted as "पलकों में छुपालो" and not "पलकों पे बिठालो ". Both the versions are so absolutely pretty. 

A real beauty from Ghalib:

परतवे खुर से है शबनम को फ़ना की तालीम
मैं भी हूँ एक इनायत की नज़र होने तक.

Meaning: सूर्य की किरणों (परतवे खुर) से ओस (शबनम) को फ़ना होने की ही शिक्षा मिली है| (सूर्य से शबनम कहती है) बस आपकी कृपा दृष्टि (इनायत की नज़र) मिलने तक ही "मैं भी हूँ." 

Another Ghalib's creation

आते हैं ग़ैब से ये मज़ामे ख़याल में,
ग़ालिब सरीरे ख़ामा, नवाए सरोश है.

ग़ैब: God, beyond
मज़ामे ख़याल: crowd of thoughts
सरीरे ख़ामा: the sound of pen on the paper
नवाए सरोश:messages brought by the angel Gabrielle (or Zibraayel in Urdu). 

Meaning: The thoughts in the mind (of Ghalib) come from beyond (God). The sound of the pen moving on paper as Ghalib writes is really the messages brought by the angel Gabrielle.

Here is a sher by Maqhsoos Dehalvee. He is not so well known but was quite popular in Delhi during his time. In fact the following sher is quite famous:

मोहब्बत के लिये कुछ ख़ास दिल मखसूस होते हैं
ये वह नगमा है जो हर साज़ पे गाया नहीं जाता.

मखसूस was his pen name but it also means 'विशिष्ट' and fits with the sher in meaning as well.

Note the following characteristics that are quite universal for Urdu ashaar (ashaar is the plural of sher): 

The two lines of a couplet may or may not rhyme. Poet's name may or may not be included in the sher. In fact there are rules for that, which will be described later.

The meter of the two lines of a sher must match. In Urdu, the maatraas 'इ" and 'उ ' can be often ignored though in some words they must be included. This is determined by convention. 

In Ghalib's ashaar and Makhsoos' sher quoted above the two lines do not rhyme. This brings us to the subject of ghazal, which is by far the most common and popular form of classical as well as contemporary Urdu poetry. In order to appreciate the full beauty of a ghazal, it is important to understand the basic features of the craft of ghazals.


5. Ghazal
Ghazal has a characteristic lyrical charm and most of the greatest poets like Ghalib, Meer, Momin, have written only ghazals. A ghazal is a set of ashaar. Eachsher is quite independent of the others though all the ashaar must convey the same mood / रस. It would be improper to have different moods that do not match in the same ghazal. However, combination of वियोगश्रृंगार and मिलनश्रृंगार is common because the mood of the two are not different. They are different aspects of the same feeling. There are two unbreakable rules of ghazal which also differentiate a ghazal with an ordinary nazm.

Rule 1:
The first couplet of the ghazal is called “matlaa” ( मतला ). Both lines of the matlaa must rhyme. This rhyme sets the radeef and kaafiyaa of the ghazal which must be followed by all the ashaar. In all the subsequent ashaar, the second line must follow the rhyme in radeef as well as kaafiyaa as set by the matlaa. Both the lines of these ashaar (except matlaa) need not rhyme with each other. In fact, in general, they should not rhyme otherwise the ghazal may become boring though sometimes poets do make deliberate digressions with very pleasing effect.

Rule 2:
The last couplet of the ghazal is called “maqtaa” (मक़ता). The maqtaa should have the poet's name. This is generally followed though some poets (notably Sahir) did not include their name. Sahir, a strong socialist, thought putting his name in his poetry is a sign of ego gratification whereas a poem belongs to people. Other scholars argue that a poet gives his/her name for the purpose of authenticity and takes responsibility of his/her poetry. It need not be ego gratification because the poem may carry credit as well as blame. Anyway, in general, in ghazals, poets do put their names. This is also one of the reasons why most poets use a takhallus तखल्लुस (pseudonym/penname - उपनाम).

Now you can identify the location of the different ashaar quoted above in their ghazals. 

मोहब्बत के लिये कुछ ख़ास दिल मखसूस होते हैं
ये वह नगमा है जो हर साज़ पे गाया नहीं जाता|

आते हैं ग़ैब से ये मज़ामे ख़याल में,
ग़ालिब सरीरे ख़ामा, नवाए सरोश है.

These ashaar are the maqtaa of their ghazal, which is indicated by the presence of the poet’s name Makhsoos and Ghalib. Other ashaar quoted above- partave khur, main to ik ashke... etc are one of the middle sher of the ghazal.

As a more complete example, let us look at the matlaa and maqtaa of Ghalib's ghazal. It has also been sung by many singers: Suraiya's rendering is very much admired and, according to Jagjit Singh, cannot be improved upon. Whether you read it or listen to it, this ghazal is a real charmer:

आह को चाहिए, इक उम्र असर होने तक
कौन जीता है तेरी ज़ुल्फ़ के सर होने तक|

Matlaa.
Note the kaafiyaa “asar”, “kesar” and the radeef “hone tak”. All subsequent ashaar will have that radeef and the kaafiyaa rhyming with “asar”, “sar”)

परतवे खुर से है शबनम को फ़ना की तालीम
मैं भी हूँ एक इनायत की नज़र होने तक.

Two intermediate ashaar.
Note the kaafiyaa “nazar”

हमने माना कि तगाफुलन करोगे लेकिन
ख़ाक हो जायेंगे हम तुमको खबर होने तक.

तगाफुल:लापरवाही, forgetfulness
kaafiyaa: “khabar”

गमे हस्ती का असद किस से हो जुज्मर्ग इलाज
शमा हर रंग में जलती है सहर होने तक.

Maqtaa.
Asad, a short form of Asadulla Khaan that was Ghalib's real name. In many ghazals he used this name.

The matlaa refers to Rapunzel’s story who had very long hair. According to the story Rapunzel would wait at the balcony and the lover would reach the balcony by climbing up the lady’s hair. The matlaa says it takes a life time for 'aah' to have its effect. Who will live that long until your hair would be long enough for me to climb up? Ghalib often gave beautiful tangential references to stories and legends. 

The maqtaa of the above ghazal means - What (i.e. nothing) can cure the pain of life (gam-e-hastee) until death (juzmarg)? The lamp (shamaa) has to burn in all conditions (every color- har rang) until the morning (sahar) comes.

Let us see another beautiful ghazal of Ghalib, an expression of extreme depression. The structure contains short lines- (छोटी बहर). 

कोई उम्मीद बर नहीं आती
कोई सूरत नज़र नहीं आती

Matlaa.

मौत का एक दिन मुऐयन है
नींद क्यों रात भर नहीं आती.

आगे आती थी हाले दिल पे हंसी
अब किसी बात पर नहीं आती.

काबा किस मुहं से जाओगे ग़ालिब
शर्म तुमको मगर नहीं आती.

Maqtaa

(Note aage in Urdu/Persian actually means 'past' or what we refer in Hindi as 'pahle'. For example aglaa zamaanaa means puraanaa zamaanaa) 

So, to repeat what was emphasized earlier, make sure your kaafiyaa matches in the word preceding the radeef. 

One more rule is that, in an attempt to match the kaafiyaa, do not use the same word more than once in a ghazal. For example in the ashaar quoted above the kaafiyaa matches but is never repeated. In the matlaa it is 'bar', in the second line, it is 'nazar'. Then in the other ashaar it is 'bhar', 'par, and finally, 'magar'. If you repeat a kaafiyaa word then it generally shows inadequacy of the poet. However, great poets do break rules occasionally in the most beautiful manner that carries a special meaning and effect. Ghalib broke this rule in at least one ghazal (perhaps the only one) but it had a tremendous significance. Let’s see:

ज़ुल्मतकदे में मेरे शबे ग़म का जोश है
इक शमा है दलीले सहर, सो खामोशहै.

Matlaa
Radeef: है Kaafiyaa: जोश, खामोश

ज़ुल्मतकदे: dark house
शबेग़म: night of sorrow
दलीलेसहर: argument of the morning

First let us admire the beauty of this sher. It says, in my house there is the excitement of the night of sorrow. Only one issue is there: one shamaa which is the argument of the morning. You have to feel and sense your own meaning of this word. “Argument of the morning”: what does that mean? Perhaps it conveys the existence of the morning which is arguing/asserting that it will come. But the shamaa is silent (khamosh). May be it is simply asserting itself by its presence without saying anything or without a need to say anything. 

After several ashaar the kaafiyaa is repeated in violation of the rule but it obviously refers to the matlaa and is linked with the event/mood of the imagery of the matlaa. The repetition of the kaafiyaa in another sher of the same ghazal:

दागे-फिराके-सोह्बते शब की जली हुई
इक शमा रह गयी थी, सो वह भी खामोश है.

फिराक: separation,
सोह्बत: company, being together
दाग: is associated with a burn - a remnant of an experience that hurts. 

The words daage-firaake-sohbate- describe the night. The shamaa that burnt that night was the only thing left (may be as a memory) now even that is silent. So the ‘khamosh’ in this sher and in the matlaa convey different but complimentary imagery.

Ghalib was a scholar of Persian and initially wrote in Persian. This would explain why his poems in general contain many Persian words. These words are part of Urdu but they make Ghalib's poem quite difficult for those whose knowledge of Urdu is limited like most of us. It is like using Sanskrit words in Hindi. Ghalib was a perfectionist. His poetry is technically perfect in addition to the greatness of the ideas. In craft as well as art, Ghalib's poetry is regarded as the model. In fact you can define a ghazal as something that Ghalib wrote.

To conclude this section, we quote a famous ghazal of Shakeel. The maqtaa of this ghazal is especially nice. As a self-exercise, try to identify the radeef and the kaafiyaa. Sing (or hum) the ghazal in different tunes. Note that you can change the tune but not so much the 'laya' which is characterized by the meter of the ghazal. 

गमे आशिकी से कह दो रहे-आम तक न पहुंचे .
मुझे खौफ है यह तोहमत तेरे नाम तक न पहुंचे.

मैं नज़र से पी रहा था, तो ये दिल ने बद्दुआ दी
तेरा हाथ ज़िंदगी भर कभी जाम तक न पहुंचे.

नयी सुबह पर नज़र है, मगर आह यह भी डर है
ये सहर भी रफ्ता रफ्ता कहीं शाम तक न पहुंचे

वो है इक हसीन नगमा, ऐ शकील जाने-हस्ती
जो ज़ुबान पे न आये, जो क़लाम तक न पहुंचे.

6. Qataa and Rubaayee
Apart from ghazal, the other main unit of Urdu poetry is a qataa. A general Hindi type sthaaye, antaraa structure is also used in nazms. A qataa is a four liner in which at least the second and the fourth line must rhyme (same rules of radeef, kaafiyaa, and meter apply). Rubaayee is a special class of qataa in which first, second, and the fourth line must rhyme. The last two lines may or may or may not contain the poet's name. In fact if you put the matlaa and themaqtaa of a ghazal together to make a four liner, it would be like a rubaayee. The difference with the ashaar of a ghazal and a qataa is that all the four lines will complete the statement and not just two. Hence all the four lines must be consistent. 

Among the top Urdu poets, Sahir did not usually write ghazals. He specialized in writing qataa. Most of his poems have qataa as their unit. His qataat were superb - some of the best in the last century. Here are some examples:

तू कहीं दूर थी, फिर भी सहर होने तक
तेरा हर सांस मेरे जिस्म को छूकर गुजरा|
क़तरा क़तरा तेरे दीदार की शबनम टपकी
लम्हा लम्हा तेरी खुशबू से मुअत्तर गुजरा|

(मुअत्तर = डूबाहुआ, सराबोर)

Note: In Persian there is only one gender. Although Urdu, like Hindi, has two genders, it has been influenced by Persian such that in many poems verbs for masculine and feminine gender are same. This is the reason why Sahir has used “teraa har saans” rather than “teree har saans” in the second line. )

दूर वादी पे दूधिया बादल
झुक के पर्वत को प्यार करते हैं।
दिल में नाकाम हसरतें लेकर,
हम तेरा इन्तज़ार करते हैं।

Note the rhyme of the second and the fourth lines and the uniformity of the meter in the above two qataat. Here is one qataa of Sahir, which is more like arubaayee:

जुनूं-नवाज़नजारों की याद आती है
गुरेज़ पेशा बहारों की याद आती है
शबे फिराक की तन्हाइयां सताती हैं
तो कैसे कैसे निगारों की याद आती है|

(जुनूनवाज़: जो पागल बना दें; 
गुरेज़पेशा: जिनका काम है खो जाना;
शबेफिराक: विरह की रात; 
निगार- सुन्दरी)

This four-liner by Firaq Gorakhpuree

लब पे ही कभी आ न सका नाम तुम्हारा
दिलने तो कई बार, कई बार पुकारा
इक बार जो मिल जाएँ वो बिछड़े हुए लम्हे
सौ बार हमें तल्खिये ऐयाम गवारा|

(तल्खियेऐयाम: bitterness of today). One of Firaq's special style was to repeat a phrase with marvelous impact. For example repetition of कई बार in the second line is so pretty.

Whereas the above two will qualify as rubaayees, a real rubaayee should have a longer meter but the difference is minor and often difficult to identify. In fact all pieces of Bachchan's Madhushala are real rubaayees. It is an example of a Hindi poem written in the Urdu or Persian style: Observe the same structure:

छोटे-से जीवन में कितना प्यार करुँ, पी लूँ हाला,
आने के ही साथ जगत में कहलाया 'जाने वाला',
स्वागत के ही साथ विदा की होती देखी तैयारी,
बंद लगी होने खुलते ही मेरी जीवन-मधुशाला|

Beyond ghazal and rubaayee, a general poem is a nazm. It may have the same structure as Hindi kavita - sthaayee, antara etc. Apart from Sahir, Iqbal, Faiz, etc. also wrote nazms. Often people (including commercial records) call some of Sahir's nazms as being ghazals. For example, Rafi's famous song of Sahir "Naghma-o-noor kee saugaat kise pesh karoon; Ye muraadon kee haseen raat kise pesh karoon”. It is a nazm with sthaayee, sahyogee, antaraa. 

Sahir's most famous nazm is “Tasavvuraat kee parchaaiyaan ubhartee hain” (also called, Parchhaiyaan). It is probably one of the best ever anti-war poem in Urdu/Hindi. If you have not read it, it is available on Kaavyaalaya - http://kaavyaalaya.org/parchhaaiyaan.shtml. The structure of this poem is very unusual. It has many sub structures because it is a long poem and is meant to be a khand kaavya (खंडकाव्य). We close this section by quoting a piece from Parchhaiyaan. 

यही फ़िज़ा थी, यही रुत, यही ज़माना था
यहीं से हमने मुहब्बत की इब्तिदा की थी
धड़कते दिल से लरज़ती हुई निगाहों से
हुजूरे-ग़ैब में नन्हीं सी इल्तिजा की थी
कि आरज़ू के कंवल खिल के फूल हो जायें
दिलो-नज़र की दुआयें कबूल हो जायें

तसव्वुरात की परछाइयाँ उभरती हैं

7 Further Reading
Here are a few books we know of on the art and craft of poetry in Hindi and Urdu, for your further reading.

1. छन्दोदर्पण by Dr. Gaurishankar Mishra ‘Dvijendra’. It was published by Anupam Prakashan in Patna in 1977. This book provides a sound introduction to the basics. It may be out of print, but should be available from a good library service.
2. Urdu Meter: A Practical Handbook by Frances W. Pritchett and Khaliq Ahmad Khaliq (South Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison Publication Series, 1987)
3. ग़ज़ल प्रवेशिका – राजेंद्र पराशर. Published by Bharatiya Gyanpeeth.
4. The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within by Stephen Fry.

We found The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry especially rewarding. Though it is about the craft of English poetry, it is very relevant to the subject matter covered by this article series. 

The book contains simple practice exercises that can train and strengthen your poetic and rhythmic muscles. It is like doing riyaaz. These exercises are specially for writing in meter, to imbibe rhythm into our being. They are also for writing within special poetic structures like the Ghazal. These exercises can be adapted for practicing Hindi poetry writing too.

Here is a fun English ghazal from the book! The author is ingeniously explaining the structure of the ghazal in the form of a ghazal.

The lines in GHAZAL always need to run, IN PAIRS.
They come, like mother-daughter, father-son, IN PAIRS

I’ll change the subject, as this ancient form requires
It offers hours of simple, harmless fun, IN PAIRS.

Apparently a Persian form, from far-off days
It needs composing just as I have done, IN PAIRS

And when I think the poem’s finished and complete
I STEPHEN FRY, pronounce my work is un-IMPAIRED.

As the maqtaa shows, this is written by Stephen Fry. The author does note that he has cheated in the radeef of the last sher. 


8 Closing Words
Now we come to the close of this article series. We hope reading it has been meaningful and enjoyable for you. We sure enjoyed writing it. It was our modest attempt to share what we know of the basic principles of Hindi poetry. 

Poetry is a great source of happiness and fulfillment. We all have poetry in our heart as a listener/reader as well as a poet. We all have the natural ability to express our self. Self expression that connects humanity as one is the fundamental value of any art form. 

Spontaneous expression is important. However, every art form be it singing, dancing, painting also has its basic rules. Poetry too has its basic rules. Educating ourselves about these and practicing them does not limit our expression, it gives strength to it. The main characteristic of poetry is to enable the reader to naturally flow from one line to the next into a different dimension that is eternal and beyond our ordinary everyday transactional communication. Poets adopt many techniques to create that impact. Familiarity with the principles, rules and techniques of poetry will make you a better reader and listener too. As we practice more and acquire expertise, we can then bring new dimensions to the art form. 

Wish you all the best for your life long journey with poetry.

यह हमारी काव्य चर्चा, 
वार्ता कितनी मनोरम। 
संग संग सीखें सिखाएं ,
एक पथ के पथिक हम तुम।
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