The Shadorma Joke
Shadorma!
But who’d a known it.
Started as
a small lie.
Now has widely multiplied.
Myth Poetica!
Background: Posted for: Poets United, my “poem” above, is a “Shadorma”. The “Shadorma” is purported to be a haiku-like Spanish poetic form with one or more stanza of six lines (sestet) with 3/5/3/3/7/5 syllable lines respectively and no set rhyme scheme.
But here is the point of my poem: I can’t find any evidence for the history of this “form”. Did someone make it up? Is it just an internet-myth and not a historical fact? Poetry sites that I have found, just echo each other saying “Little is known about this poetic style’s origins and history but it is used by many modern poets today.”
Question for readers: If you can find any solid historical evidence for the Shadorma, let me know. Maybe it is real, or maybe just an urban poetic myth. 🙂
Gay Canon over at dverse might know. She does a lot of prompts on poetic forms there.
Thanx, Sheila, I asked Gay — still awaiting a reply. Maybe she is looking too. It is a fun exercise. Myth or not, forms can be fun, eh?
Well, every form was made up by someone at some point, and new ones are being created all the time. If it exists, it’s no longer mythical. 🙂 So I think it is you who are having a little joke with us. Very neat shadorma, anyway!
myth or real, it’s worth a try… and you wrote it well. 🙂
Now that is a creative take on the form!
I have yet to tackle the assignment, but it awaits me in my ‘drafts’ folder!
@ Snaky Poet:
Oh, don’t get me wrong:
(1) I love forms
(2) I love that folks create new forms
(3) I am just getting a kick out of the fact that perhaps this form was created under a pretense. Instead of saying:”Here is a new form, I’d like to introduce”. My question is: “Did someone try to sneak in a “new” form by pretending it was an old one, or one of another country — so it can’t be questioned?”
I would guess that if people researched a lot of poetic forms their origins would be unknown.
@ Mary,
Actually, I think most origins are known accurately-enough: accurate to when and where. I suspect almost none were just deceitfully crafted – like perhaps this Shadorma is. So that is the question.
Many months later – still don’t know if it’s real. Can’t find any mention in Thrall Hubbard. As you stated every one requotes what is on the internet. Wikipedia also includes your statement above. My doubts about its authenticity comes from the fact that it doesn’t do anything – it isn’t musical, it doesn’t have a Kiru or any kind of turn, it has no meter or rhyme scheme (which makes the claim to being early Spanish even more dubious as Spanish and Italian forms are so much more musical and rhyming is more natural than in English or German). I don’t know how it came into existence. I think it might pre-date twitter but it’s a good size for a tweet.
Yeah, thanx for visiting Gay — lots of months later. You understand! You get it. How the heck did you ever find your way back here?
A substantial comment — oh I missed them on this poetry blog. I haven’t done poetry for a long while with a big part of that being that I missed substantial comments — comments about ideas. Thanks for thinking and playing along.
I was just as interested as you… got lost in the weeds. No trace. But, if that’s the way it has to be, so be it. Oh, I just finished one. 🙂