Top Five, Shadorma, and a Question

I’ve got a top five list for you today:

Top 5 Movies about Poetry

No. 5 – Dead Poet’s Society – It has ‘poet’ in the title so there’s some rule that it has to be included.

No. 4 – Byron – BBC television series. Incest, homosexuality, nudity, sodomy, poetry… it’s got it all.

No. 3 – Dangerous Beauty – gotta love the workin’ girls.

No. 2 – Possession – book and movie were both actually equally good. First time EVER!

And the best movie about poetry of all time:



No. 1 – Shakespeare in Love – I don’t care what you say about it, I have guy friends who tear up over this one. Not quite “I don’t know how to quit you” but melodramatic awesomeness.


Form of the day:

In honor of the Bard, today’s form should be the sonnet, but you can find that anywhere (abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme in iambic pentameter or “oh SHIT” meter), so instead, we’re going with a Spanish form, which I thought was a Japanese form, but no, my bad. No gold star.

The shadorma is a SPANISH form of poetry, based on syllable count (thus my impression that it was Japanese since there’s such an emphasis on syllables there, but no matter). It’s a 6-line poem with a syllable count of 3/5/3/3/7/5. I got it from Writer’s Digest and Robert Lee Brewer talks about it on Poetic Asides. I couldn’t find much relating to origins or history of this form, though one source mentioned the syllable scheme can be used as stanzas. http://allpoetry.com/list/62863-Shadorma. Shadormas are fun to write, but beware! they are addictive.

And an announcement: I’ve nearly completed a chapbook. (YEY!) It’s not new work, but work I revised from college. I’m interested to know how many readers would be interested in a pdf version of it. It’s a self-publishing/self-promotion scheme but since the format of the book is a little unusual with its mix of poetry, flash fiction, and short stories, I know better than to try sending it to a traditional publisher and it doesn’t read as well (in my opinion) broken up into parts. One of those the end is more than the sum of its parts things. So leave a comment if you’d be interested and we’ll go from there.