Ya Lateef!

     Ramadan is upon us (though being celebrated under straitened conditions), so this seems an opportune time to learn about a sort of poem that arose in Arabia.
     A ghazal is made up of several rhyming couplets that end in the same word or phrase. It often expresses pain or longing, lamenting or praising in an incantatory fashion. Ghazals have been written for more than a millenium in the Eastern Hemisphere by poets like Rumi.

Rumi in a gathering of mystics.

     The form remains attractive enough to entice modern poets such as Marilyn Hacker, a child of the Bronx. Today our Associate Director Elizabeth Joseph recommends Hacker's poem "Ghazal !يا لطيف (Ya Lateef!)."