chriswoodc&b12

I really enjoyed the ghazal project we did earlier in the semester, and so I thought I would write another one.  For the ghazal project I wrote a piece that attempted to portray my spiritual experiences and show how they are different than those usually represented in ghazals.  My experience of religious fervor is not uniform and inconsistent, whereas ghazals seem to always be expressing complete fervor and abandon.  Because I went in that direction for the ghazal project I thought I would write a more traditional ghazal as one of my creative projects.  To that end, my piece is about one completely given over to the search for his lover, who represents the love of God.  The lover is constantly searching, even though exhausted, and he reprimands others for not being as passionate in their search, or even not knowing to search.  The search for his lover is everything, and it is a travesty that all do not grasp this and are not searching alongside him.  I invoke tradition images, especially of wine, the drunkenness of wine, and flowers, and I also explicitly discuss, in bayt six, the Sufi desire to lose one’s particularity in the absolute love of God, the path towards the center.  The poem is fully about one completely given over to journey to immerse oneself in the love of God.  I also constructed my poem according to a meter, which is LONG-short-LONG-short-LONG-short-LONG-short-LONG-short-LONG-short-short-short-short-LONG.  I liked the rhythmic feel of this meter.  I also chose the –ide sound for the recurring rhyme at the end of each bayt.  I also used my middle name, David, as my signature since my first name had an awkward number of syllables for the meter, and my last name didn’t feel quite right.  I’m most proud of bayt 3, which I think very naturally fits the meter and has some nice phrases.