Monday, January 04, 2010

Monday Poetry Stretch - Shadorma

This week I thought we'd try another new (to me at least) poetic form. The shadorma is a poem composed of six lines with a syllable count of 3/5/3/3/7/5. That's it! Easy-peasy, right?

Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.

14 comments:

  1. Thank you for not giving a detailed, complicated challenge this week! I'm trying to ease back in:>)

    Here's mine, based on what happened during cross-country skiing with my daughter last night:

    Owl, Meet Skier

    Shadowy,
    Solid shape on tree
    Lifts, spreads, swoops—
    Hoo-hoo-hooooo!
    Introduction drifts like snow
    Hangs in twilight sky

    --Laura Purdie Salas

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  2. I hope you don't mind but I used rhyme and did three. This is fun!

    Onion Thief

    He took ten
    yellow onions from
    a garden
    late last week.
    Then snuck back in on Tuesday
    but just took a leek.

    c2010 by K. Thomas Slesarik

    The Peculiar Mosquito

    It landed
    on my arm with a
    sweet, simple,
    lilting grace.
    The mosquito’s curlicue
    covered her cute face.

    c2010 by K. Thomas Slesarik

    Marriage Minded Melons

    Honeydews
    should not elope with
    cantaloupes
    sans prenup,
    in case of course, they divorce.
    That’s a travesty.

    c2010 by K. Thomas Slesarik

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  3. Shadowrama x 4

    This shadow
    lifting from a branch,
    a shadow
    of a branch,
    into the shadow-filled sky
    reminds me of you.

    This full moon,
    caught in the tree’s arms,
    the dead tree,
    roost for owls,
    knocking place for woodpeckers,
    reminds me of you.

    Each small thing,
    in nature’s cupboard,
    each shadow,
    and each shade
    of feather, fur, leafmeal, mold
    reminds me of you

    who is now
    tree, moon, owl, sky, wing,
    shadow, ash,
    memory
    as insubstantial as air,
    as necessary.

    ©2010 Jane Yolen All rights reserved

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  4. Because weddings and having a bad cold make me philosophical:

    My Nephew's Wedding, 1/02/10

    Too much noise,
    too many people,
    too much food...
    But the best
    too much was the look in her
    eyes, the look in his.


    Still Life with Yogurt

    Blueberries
    clump in a white bowl
    beneath clouds
    of yogurt.
    I think about Einstein as
    the minutes click by.

    How is it
    that each minute seems
    fraught somehow,
    yet pointless?
    Now blueberries remind me
    of wet wheelbarrows.

    The yogurt
    can be white chickens,
    or this page—
    it's white, too.
    It can be chickens, and my
    pen the wheelbarrow.

    Everything
    matters, or nothing
    does. Yogurt,
    my fingers,
    the pen, and now you reading:
    I say everything.

    —Kate Coombs, 2010

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  5. Toughest kid
    in the seventh grade
    was Paul Corr --
    known as Moose --
    who'd hit a girl with glasses
    for her lunch ticket.

    We feared him,
    but I saw him once
    running late
    to a car
    and a fat fist cuffed his cheek --
    gift of Papa Moose.

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  6. Happy New Year to all Stretchers, and thanks, Tricia, for the challenge. The word "shadorma" made me hungry. And sleepy.

    Shadorma

    sleep sizzles
    aromatically
    on the spit
    of night. carve
    juicy slices onto white
    sheets of pita bed.

    2010 Heidi Mordhorst
    all rights reserved

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  7. Thank goodness everyone seems to be having more of an "up" day than I am. Here's my shadorma:

    NOT EVERYTHING IMPROVES WITH AGE

    When I was
    younger I lobbied
    for peace. Once
    when I went
    to buy a banner, the flag
    store had only one--

    Peace on Earth--
    over a manger.
    Christmas is
    just ONE day!
    Every year has three hundred
    sixty-five total!

    Foolish youth!
    Now, I'm older. Now
    I know that
    if we had
    peace on earth, for JUST one day,
    we'd be in heaven.

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  8. Heidi--"Pita bed"? LOL! What a funny, strange, cool poem about sleep!
    --Kate

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  9. Interesting form but I wonder about the why behind it. Is there something about the syllable count of this one that appeals to the ear? Maybe it's all those prime numbers...do our ears pick that up? Or maybe I'm over-thinking it. Here's my contribution:

    Inquisition

    A poor Moor
    waiting at your gate,
    too late now
    for fake faith,
    I hear a songbird confess, "Si...,
    "si...te adoro."

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  10. Oops - that doesn't work - I have too many syllables in the next-to-last line. Oh, shoot. Well, strike the "Si" in that line.

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  11. Julie - This is a Spanish form. I wonder if there's something that we lose in translation. Do Spanish words just "fit" better?

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  12. I was wondering that, too, Tricia. It's possible that all the latinate words in Spanish, which tend to be more multi-syllabled (lots and lots of three syllables)than the blunt Anglo-Saxon words of English, lend themselves to this form. I'd love to see some in Spanish! Maybe I'll try to write one?

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  13. I took some unexpected time away from writing and am slowing crawling back to it. This was harder than I thought it would be.



    in silence
    words impatiently
    wait for me
    beg me for
    stories only I can write
    soon, I promise, soon

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  14. Hi Tricia ~ found this form a real stretch this week.

    JUMBLED INNARDS

    Interview
    twists up my belly
    jumbles my
    innards and
    hurls me into a cyclone
    of boisterous dread.

    © Carol Weis

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