It was explained to us in English class but I’ve yet to fully understand it because I didn’t get a chance to ask the teacher. Many examples online seem to contradict themselves. I know it has something to do with repeating certain words, rhyming, and syllables.
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Ok so from what I can tell, the lines of a ghazal are separated into pairs, often called couplets, verses, bayts, or shers. The second line usually builds upon the first line.
Every bayt ends in the same sound (called the qaafiyaa), and then the same word (called the radif). For example, who would, you would, and a canoe would, all end in an “oo would”; oo is the qaafiyaa, would is the radif.
The first bayt is special, called the matlaa, and the first line in it also ends in the qaafiyaa and radif. So the second line of every bayt, every other line in the poem, all end in an oo would, but so does the first line. Every odd-numbered line except the first can end however.
The last bayt also has a name, the maqtaa, but it’s not as special. It’s common for writers to include some word play involving their name in the maqtaa
There’s also what’s called a behr, which is a syllable and stress pattern that the lines match to. This is very normal to the modern palate, like how every line of the poem “ae fond kiss and then we sever” can be sung to the TMNT theme.
Of course poetry is art and there are always exceptions. Of the three Persian ghazals [this site](https://persianlanguageonline.com/persian-poetry/rumi/ghazals) blessed me with, two don’t have a radif. Art isn’t about hard and fast rules; if it were it’d be a STEM field.
You’ll also notice that the radif and the qaafiyaa super don’t appear in the English translations – you’d need to do some serious rephrasing to recreate those in translation. This is a good reason to be extremely confused as fuck when you’re looking at an English translation and it has no qaafiyaa, no radif and no behr and you can barely identify where lines end – they got lost in translation
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