Jalsaghar

By Steffen Horstmann

Praise for Jalsaghar

My hands memorize your hourglass waist. /Slow winds pass through distant sands, sifting grains. Imagine that beauty rethought in stanza after stanza. The ghazal is the Satie of poetry, sustained by the whirling dervish, its couplets braiding into the brain. Steffen Horstmanns Jalsaghar is a stunning homage to the late Agha Shahid Ali (Terese Svoboda, author of Professor Harrimans Steam Air-Ship).

A rapproachment with a formal tradition demands incisive cultural evaluation; an assay of a formal tradition not ones own demands that one become a naturalized citizen of a nation of poetry. The sure-footedness with which Steffen Horstmann navigates the ghazal forma kind of poem often misunderstood in Anglophone practiceis a testimony to long and devoted study as well as to Horstmanns skill as a practitioner, his keen ear, and his passion for the possibilities of the kind of dtente poetry offers: a genuine cross-pollination of the music, the landscapes, the souls of distant and yet always kindred lives (T. R. Hummer, author of Skandalon).

Steffen Horstmanns book of contemporary ghazals shows us the ways in which formin this case precise, musical, devotional in its originscan act as a vehicle for meditation. The rhymes and repetitions of the ghazal are part prayer, part spell, and as such they bind together in language the world of material things and the world of spirit, which is also a world of longing. Agha Shahid Ali brought the tradition of the ghazal into the center of our contemporary and American poetic repertoire; Steffen Horstmann has carried it into our young century, made it new (Mark Wunderlich, author of The Earth Avails).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Oct 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781482886214

Steffen Horstmann

As Agha Shahid Ali’s student, Steffen Horstmann studied the history of the ghazal form and began writing his own ghazals in English. His poems and book reviews have appeared in publications throughout the world, including Baltimore Review, Free State Review, Istanbul Literary Review, Texas Poetry Journal, and Tiferet.

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Copyright © 2016 by Steffen Horstmann.

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4828-8623-8

      Softcover      978-1-4828-8622-1

      eBook         978-1-4828-8621-4

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CONTENTS

FOREWORD

Jalsaghar: A World of Ghazals

I IN YOUR COUNTRY

The Sands

Forever

[How the bronze light of the equinox]

The Riptides

[Incense lingers in a tomb where falcons]

[Sprinting djinns cast fleet shadows around you]

Variation on a Theme by Dylan Thomas

Today

The Steelhead

The Coast of Dungarvan

[Salamanders swarm along the stream in your Japanese garden]

Variation on a Theme by James Merrill

The Rages

[Absences assume shadows that graze in the outer dark]

In Your Country

[Coastal gales thresh a sunlit field of sugarcane]

[A defunct factory, its windows become faces]

In the Dockyards

[I knelt before dolmens & a cloud rose over me]

[Clouds roil as a Shango drum echoes in the Nile delta]

Shroud of Leaves

[Misted in sand, a woman wearing a gold sari]

[You were entranced in the embrace of your destroyer]

The Wind Sings in its Whirling

As it Turns

II THE MANIKARNIKA GHAT

The Epoch of Whirlwinds

[The thunderclaps of chariot cavalries]

Bladed Light

The Manikarnika Ghat

[Radiant mica swirling]

[The dark of crevices]

[Translucent hummingbirds emanating]

Stony Mesas

Solar Fire

Variation on a Theme by Izumi Kyoka

Onyx Moon in a Sea of Light

III THE DIVA OF JALSAGHAR

The Diva of Jalsaghar

IV WHOM WE CALL ISHMAEL

Ghazal of Diminishment

Ghazal of the Twin Comets

Ghazal of the Elephants

Ghazal of the Startled Silence

Ghazal of the Black Water

Ghazal of the Grasses

Ghazal of the Dust

Ghazal of Death

Houses

Memory

Ghazal (Late at Night)

Broken Ghazal

Across the Bay

Eye of the Storm

Heart of the Dervish

Water

Paper

The Incandescent Jacamar

[Hornets thrum in bleached skulls wreathed in seaweed]

[Within the eyes of dying djinns tunnels]

[Circe once bathed in a cove between the sandy cliffs]

Sand

Light Streams Through the Stained Glass Madonna

Of Blue & Gold

Ghazal Considering the Composition of a Sonnet

Ghazal of the Sacred Ground

Ghazal of the Belovéd

Ghazal Spoken by Rumi

Through Spirals of a Seashell

Ghazal of Restoration

Japanese Ghazal

The World Your Word Kept Between Us

[In Jahanara’s chandeliered boudoir]

[In a temple hall Cleopatra’s crystal casket shines]

Ghazal of Departure

You Are Leaving

Ghazal of Departure (A Reprise)

Ghazal

Ghalib’s Ghost

Broken Ghazal

Whom We Call Ishmael

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Horstmann, Steffen.

Jalsaghar/Steffen Horstmann. 1st ed.

*

The ghazals herein, often as different versions, have appeared in the following publications, and are reprinted with permission: The Aurorean, Blue Unicorn, Candelabrum, Common Ground Review, Contemporary Ghazals, Contemporary Rhyme, The Criterion, Das Literarisch, Free State Review, The Ghazal Page, HazMat Review, Hurricane Review, The Indian Review, Ishaan, Istanbul Literary Review, Knot Magazine, Life and Legends, Louisiana Literature, Lynx, The Lyric, Mad Swirl, Meridian Anthology, Mobius, The Morning Dew Review, The Neovictorian, Oyez Review, Pebble Lake Review, Pegasus, Poem, Raintown Review, Recursive Angel, The Red Fez, Taj Mahal Review, Texas Poetry Journal, Tiferet, Unlikely Stories, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and Xavier House Review.

The Sands, [Absences assume shadows that graze in the outer dark], and Bladed Light appeared in Contemporary Ghazals: An Anthology, edited by R.W. Watkins (Nocturnal Iris, 2014).

Seek the beloved of both worlds to hold in your embrace.

~ Ghalib

Your feet bleed,