Ghazal

 

 

 

Type: Structure; Meter; Rhyme

Structure: Ghazal (pronounced ghuzzle) is over 1000 years old, of Persian origin. It is composed of 5 to 15 couplets. Each couplet should be a poem unto itself. The first couplet should rhyme. The second line of the following couplets should rhyme with the first couplet. There can also be a refrain with each of the rhyme words. Each line must have the same rhythm. The last couplet is often the poet's signature/.

Rhyme Scheme: aA bA cA dA etc.

Example: These Aged Pines by Erin Thomas

Amid lush fern carpet stand per pending pillars;
Into broad canopy rise impending pillars.

Shady gloom in quiet calm hangs perpetual
Neath enshrouding shelter of attending pillars.

Ringlets firm encircle hearts of antiquity,
Deeply shielded within great suspending pillars.

More than stately; more than magnificently made,
High up into heavens reach transcending pillars.

Among elder giants Zahhar walks astonished,
His heart held uplifted by extending pillars.

Alexandrine Couplets

 

 

Type: Structure; Meter; Rhyme scheme.

Structure: An alexandrine 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

Meter: Iambic hexameter.

Rhyme: aa bb cc etc.

Example: Alexandrine Couplet by Jan Haag

A dark and gloomy day, pigmented by the moon --
who failed to set, who failed to leave, who would not swoon

into the thickness of the night, into the cloud
that dark, with glimmering rim, invited like a shroud

of sacrilegious candles lit to shine along
the way of strange behaviour, odd, eccentric, strong

and motivated, misalignment, across the dune
which even the isolated, lonely, haunted loon

forsook, and pushed its dark head into the lake, bowed
by the shocking ineptitude of time banging and loud

-- ended inevitably in darkness to prolong
what would otherwise end with a resounding gong.