Ghazals 1-59 and Other Poems
By Sheila E. Murphy and Michelle
Greenblatt
Published by Unlikely Books, New
Orleans, Louisiana
Review by Judy Katz-Levine
In this astonishing collaboration by
the living poet Sheila E. Murphy and the deceased poet Michelle
Greenblatt who suffered from fibromyalgia, a disease which did not
keep her from writing with great passion, the formal structure of the
ghazal, a signature of Sufi poets such as Rumi, is reinvented and
brought to a contemporary American understanding.
The ghazal form was is as structured as
a sonnet, and was often written during the 13th to 16th centuries in
the Timurid empire by Sufi mystics.Traditionally, it is known to be
composed of couplets between 12 and 15 lines. Murphy and Greenblatt
create an alternative form of fifteen couplets per ghazal. While the
first two lines of a traditional ghazal end in the same word, every
other subsequent line ending in the same word as well, Murphy and
Greenblatt play on repetition by taking turns in writing inventive
couplets, and therein lies their interplay of form and repetitiion.
The similarity between the Sufi ghazals of poets such as Rumi, Hafiz
and Navoiy and these experimental longer explorative ghazals by
Sheila Murphy and Michelle Greenblatt is one of passion. While the
ghazals of Navoiy for example focus on the depth of love for the
beloved even when scorned, elevating that to a metaphor for the
divine, Murphy and Greenblatt translate that love into a passion for
language, the surprise turns of language and image, the light of
cognitive play. While Rumi for example would be closer to Lorca in
feeling, the cognitive light given to these seamlessly woven couplets
of Murphy and Greenblatt do more often reflect the passion of
Shakespeare for cognitive delight in the movement of human insight.
One also thinks of contemporary avant garde classical music, such as
the works of John Cage in “Ocean Of Sound” or the composition of
Morton Subotnick, “Silver Apples Of The Moon”.
Here is an example of the astonishing
delight and surprise turns of image and thought manifested in Ghazals
1-59:
This quote is from Ghazal Seventeen:
“Look for the wind to gather you from
port to prominence;
Landscape’s a deception so keep your
camera ready.
The handwriting still runs across the
page as if
Electric shock were prompting lines
from the beyond.
Staccato overtime remainders figs and
salt
Scattered on the late the waves of song
rise and fall.”
The sheer inventiveness in language
manifested in these 59 ghazals is highly unusual in contemporary
poetry, despite our love for non-rhymed forms and discursive
narratives. Murphy and Greenblatt love the element of surprise
especially in image, and the musicality of both poets is so matched
one to another that the true love and passion must be, here, the
working together of these two poets, their intense connection, as
they devoted themselves to this major project of creative leaps.
Here is another couplet which explores existence in contemporary
America and illustrates the highly musical lines and imagistic
surprises of this collaboration:
Here is an excerpt from Ghazal
Thirty-Six
“I owned a mountain full of stony
slopes
And descended to exhume its dark past.
Labor exponentially prepares love
For the stains of eyelight squared upon
roses.
Your code was more elegant than your
word,
More picturesque than ample and not
true.
Scented branches are the first clue of
brushfire
Raging through the vicissitude of
woods.”
Themes of nature are woven with theme
of connection with other humans, and human activities, and there is
only an occasional reference to the problem of violence in
contemporary life. References to Greenblatt’s experiences with
synesthesia are somewhat rare but are manifested in the sensuality of
surprise evident throughout this collection with its multilayered
reliance on sight, hearing, taste, touch, human emotion and
intuition.
This is from ghazal Fifty:
“Simpler than blue, more resonant
than all within the human
Is a color of inexpressible beauty, of
mankind.
Buried in my chest, a weight that
humbles
Crafts unmeasured space, still
lingering.
Premises vanilla as no foreseeable
infection leans
Towards chocolate being a flavor which
many people love,
Under the cropped sun, the horizon
sinks
Into syllables parallel to sky.”
Sheila Murphy and Michelle Greenblatt
can be seen as explorers to a new continent of poetic form, and
inventors supreme of language that pushes the boundaries of our
senses and cognitive lights. This book, a work of great dedication,
which was completed despite the illness of Greenblatt and her battle
with pain and death, is a monument to creative invention in its pure
form. It gives us the ghazal in a reincarnated state that is an
available leap for all who love poetry, ancient and contemporary and
explorative.
Judy Katz-Levine
