From the Vaults: Amanda Earl

Hafez was a master of the ghazal.Past Puritan contributor Amanda Earl discusses her ghazals from Issue 17: Spring 2012, and cheating at the game of convention.My ghazals were published in Issue 17, Spring 2012. I wrote about 120 of these poems in response to ghazals by John Thompson, Adrienne Rich, Jim Harrison and the Persian master of the form, Hafez. What is it about ghazals that sparks these responses? For me it's the immediacy of them and the imaginative leaps between couplets, the form of the couplet itself, which must be a free-standing structure in its own right and yet still somehow contribute to the coherence and flow of the poem overall. It's a challenging form to write. As I am writing this, I am looking back at the ghazals published in The Puritan and noticing that, in fact, the couplets are not free-standing at all. Apparently the French poet René Char had a sign above his desk that said something like "cheat at this game." I think I read that in an essay by Jack Spicer from a book I have loaned to someone and no longer remember the title of. The thing about me is that one thing always leads to another. As I'm writing this, the poet Seamus Heaney has just died. I admit that I didn't read his work much, hadn't read it in a long time. Through the grace and immediacy of social media, I had the opportunity to read a few of his poems and enjoyed them, was affected by them. I also read a few reactions to his death. People were praising him and I understood why, but also there were poets who were writing about how Poetry is something that can Change The World. How Poets Had A Duty To Tell The Truth blah blah blah. I've always rebelled against that notion of poet as prophet or at the idea of revealing some important truth about the universe. I don't think I could write a god damn word if I thought I had to offer up some kind of secret knowledge of how things work in the universe. I approach poetry from a place of humility. I'm just a schmuck who ekes out poems on occasion, trying to match the words on the page to some replica of what goes on in my mind, a scary and often dark place. I have no answers, just questions. I'm also a liar. The speakers in my poems have never worn the underpants of ex-lovers. I have no idea what they get up to when I'm not writing about them. I like to imagine John Thompson giving the finger to those who spout such nonsense. [Read Ghazal IX for a clue.]Time for some more ghazals? Not me, but why don't you give it a try?Amanda Earl writes poetry and smut in Ottawa where she also runs Bywords.ca and AngelHousePress. Find her on Twitter @KikiFolle or read about her shenanigans on AmandaEarl.com.