Never heard of a ghazal? You’re not alone. Meet this ancient form of poetry

It’s not an animal that resembles an elk and runs quickly. A ghazal is a type of poem.

Two professors in the Creative Writing Program turned to the seventh-century style of verse during the pandemic to tackle the monotony of lockdown.

“We just felt like the ghazal was the perfect form to write about the repetition, of every day just being the same thing over and over and over again,” says Denise Duhamel.

A ghazal consists of five to 15 rhyming couplets and typically features a repeated word or phrase. The latter aspect most resonated with Duhamel, a poet well acquainted with the Arabian lyric poem and who recognized its potential to capture the uniformity of days filled with no outings and no gatherings.

Julie Marie Wade, on the other hand, writes longer works of nonfiction and had never before crafted a ghazal. The pair started collaborating via email as meeting in person was taboo.

“I would write two lines and Julie would write two lines,” Duhamel explains. So back and forth they went, fitting in their exchanges between teaching remotely and meeting students online for office hours, the weekdays and weekends blurring together amid the isolation.

And while casual observers might think of poetry writing as a solitary activity, Duhamel has a prolific history as a co-creator of verse and has published several such collections, most notably with the late poet Maureen Seaton.

Now she and Wade formally unveil their cowritten volume, a de facto testament to the tedium of quarantine. The poems themselves, however, belie the boredom out of which they arose, with references to the likes of Dolly Parton and Alex Trebek bringing the fun.

Catch the writers at 6 p.m. on April 19, during National Poetry Month, at Books ‘n’ Books in Coral Gables as they share a ghazal or two.

And for the record, it’s pronounced “guzzle.”

Zoom Ghazal
by Denise Duhamel and Julie Marie Wade

Sometimes the days pass so quickly—zoom!—
Sometimes the days pass so slowly on Zoom

where colleagues seem tiny in their chairs, 
heads perfectly squishable now. Kids Zoom

and learn the alphabet without a teacher’s hand 
scrawling on a board: A is for absent, Z is for Zoom.

We celebrate cyber birthdays, cry at #zoomerals,
grow nostalgic at Mazda commercials (Zoom-Zoom),

thinking of the cancelled road trips and plane trips.
Remember zipping across Alligator Alley, zooming

maskless, dirty hands on the wheel? Stopping for gas 
a mindless chore of the touch-and-go Before. Zoom

in on our shared bucket of popcorn, fingers scooping 
the hot buttery florets as our elbows touch. Zoom

out, and there’s a movie on a big screen, strangers around
a crowded buffet. TV dinners are to potlucks as Zoom

karaoke singers are to packed dance floors. I once took a sip
from someone else’s punch—no biggie then. Zoom

went my cheeks, and soon I was dizzy, delightedly spiked.
Tonight I toss, counting my Zzzzzs. Dream-screen. Dream-Zoom.