Pedantry and Death Mode Drabbles

[soc_puppet]

So on the one hand, I could point out that the English language use of the term "haiku" is a very watered down version of the traditional Japanese form, and that therefore using it to defend defining drabbles as exactly 100 words may not be the best move; you're going to get dozens of pedants in the notes (just like me, right here and now) pointing out all the other rules that haiku have beyond just the 5-7-5 syllable arrangement, and how English language haiku largely ignore those rules, so maybe comparing drabbles to sonnets or Bredlik poems would be more appropriate.

But the much more interesting and funny approach would be to suggest that 100 words is the minimum form requirement for drabbles, and that there should be different optional rules for drabbles depending on who your writing buddies are, what fandom you're in, etc.

Tell me, what would your extra requirements be for Death Mode Drabbles? 😈

Comments

[alexseanchai]

as a poetic form, the sonnet tends
to clock in at around one hundred words.
not from any effort toward such ends:
pentameter, in iambs, undergirds—
coincidentally—syllabic counts
that, in the English structure and syntax,
will break down word by word in such amounts
there's eight or seven words per line—it tracks
that times fourteen will hit three digits, just.
hexameter in dactyls will not work
the way Shakespearean-style sonnets must,
but might do better drabbling when the quirk
authorial is polysyllabic:
under ninety words? hardly dogmatic!

I was going somewhere else with this.

o m g

[jesse_the_k]

Sound the bells, alert the grammarians and text all the fans. We have a sonneteer in this timeline!

Re: o m g

[alexseanchai]

unfortunately that is only a sonnet, not also a drabble

and this is a drabble, not also a sonnet. that poem even says in the text it is not a sonnet!

…I may have some favorite themes.

(the cut text on that fan_flashworks post reads "a walking stick is not a great chasing hammer")

Re: o m g

[jesse_the_k]

Most excellent -- and you've just introduced me to the delight that is fan_flashworks' Pinboard, with 194 poems right now.

https://www.pinboard.in/u:fan_flashworks/t:m:poetry