The Qasida as a Vehicle of Desire in Lorca’s “Casida De La Rosa”

by Shadab Zeest Hashmi Federico Garcia Lorca’s casidas are free adaptations of the Andalusi-Arabic qasidas, which he had read in Spanish. In Robert Bly’s English rendition of Lorca’s casidas, the flavor of the classical Arabic qasida form has been preserved to a considerable extent, even though it reaches us through various levels of distillation: first,…

“Saying” the Ghazal: Duende and Performing the Courtly Art of the Ghazal

by Shadab Zeest Hashmi Mughal miniature showing a poetry reading, c. 1640-50 The ghazal entered my consciousness first as music (on Radio Pakistan or my parents’ LPs), accessible only through melody, beat, rhyme, refrain; the poem’s literary heft, of course, utterly lost on me. The ghazal was really a visceral stimulus in my pre-language existence…