Ghazals for Foley

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The idea to publish a book of ghazals for Jim came to us after having read an October 25, 2014 NY Times article, The Horror Before the Beheadings. The article discusses Jim’s conversion to Islam while he was being held in Syria. Naturally, the article begs the question of whether any conversion under such duress [is] a legitimate one ? Using the ghazal’s form to speak with Jim made sense to us, I guess, because of how the form has addressed separation, mourning, and loss for almost an eon. The year before we were set to start at ZooMass, a poetry professor there, Agha Shahid Ali, assembled a book of ghazals, Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English (Wesleyan Press, 2000). Ali’s anthology contains more than one hundred ravishing ghazals, and establishes linguistic, historical criteria poets can utilize to contradict the claim made by American poets that the sonnet is our oldest poetic form. We wanted to speak to Jim, perhaps, using a form he might more easily authenticate, given his recent conversion to Islam. At the same time, I have always known Jim to be spiritually curious and spiritually seeking and on the prowl for better belief systems. -Yago Cura in a Sept. 30, 2015 Sliver of Stone interview