Thursday, April 28, 2016

Carpe Diem Special #208 Sara McNulty's 4th "fantasy" shadorma


Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

First this: Through circumstances I forgot to publish the 4th CD-special by Sara yesterday. I was to busy with the new edition of Souchou, our own e-zine. So here it is the last CD-special of April in which I will 'highlight' haiku by Sara McNulty, our 'time'-kukai winner.

As I ran through Sara's oeuvre I ran into several beautiful haiku, but I ran also into a shadorma. I remember that I have done a Carpe Diem "Little Ones" episode somewhere in August 2014 and this is what I told you there about shadorma:

[...] "The Shadorma is a poetic form consisting of a six-line stanza (or sestet). The form is alleged to have originated in Spain. Each stanza has a syllable count of three syllables in the first line, five syllables in the second line, three syllables in the third and fourth lines, seven syllables in the fifth line, and five syllables in the sixth line (3/5/3/3/7/5) for a total of 26 syllables. A poem may consist of one stanza, or an unlimited number of stanzas (a series of shadormas).


It has been suggested that the shadorma is not a historical poetic form as it is alleged to be by those who have recently revived and popularized it. There is no evidence of extant early Spanish poetry using this form. Further, the word shadorma does not appear in Spanish-language dictionaries, and no examples of the early usage of the form appear in poetry textbooks or anthologies. Further, there is no literary criticism regarding its history in Spanish literature. Considering this, the alleged history of the shadorma may be modern hoax (a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth) or the poetic equivalent of an urban legend (a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true). However, the shadorma has been used by many modern writers and is a popular writing exercise in creative writing programs." [...]

Sara wrote a nice shadorma "fantasy" which I love to share here:

She returns to earth
winged spirit
alighting
on a leaf’s silver tear.
Unseen, she observes.

And a nice double shadorma "a cozy evening":

My sister and I
watched old films,
black and white
holiday classics we knew
by heart.  Curled on couch

our arms extended,
palms stroking
gold-brown fur
of a tiger-striped tabby,
green eyes, slits of bliss.





The goal for this CD-Special is to write a shadorma inspired on the verses by Sara. Here is my attempt:

It's a poetry-form were I am not so familiar with so I will give it a try to write my first Shadorma ever and share it here with you all ...

red Roses
sharing their perfume,
morning mist
and the soft breeze
giving it to the whole wide world,
unknown love

© Chèvrefeuille

This CD-Special is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until May 3rd at noon (CET). I will post our planned episode, puddles, later on.


1 comment:

  1. The shadorma is a new form to me. Thanks, Sara, and Kristjaan, for the inspiration here. I wrote a shadorma about "puddles", combining two prompts!

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