Minimalist Poetry Contest

Color Me in Twilight

You paint me in indigo,
exploding hues of red,
left among apocalyptic orange,
a stroke of subtle tones
of intensifying yellow.

Twilight

Surrendered
breathless afterglow
Twilight kisses
good night

Final ?

twilight
takes over the solar
the sky is
polar
white is oh my.

Sorry, I've been having a rough time with my bi-polar. It's hell sometimes to just be me.

Anyhoo-- JAKED-- you're up. Congrats, good description, very few but poignant words!

Woohoo! Thanks Pendragon! I enjoyed all of the entires!

Next topic: wonder.

Deadline in 2 weeks, 10/24.

I wonder why I turned up here:
Blue sky, green grass, a mind less clear.

from wonder to wonderful
to think is to perfect rule.

Just two entries? Let's have one more week... Submit your entries this week - I'll judge on Halloween. Boo!

Wonder
Wandering
Wavering
Wish
What
Who
Where
When
Why
Wonder
Why

Wonder
sparks
Wonder
driven
Wonder
full

Wonder

No wonder
I don’t believe:
there is
no wonder.

I don’t believe
there is.
No wonder?
I don’t believe.

I wonder
about thunder
Heightening
with lightning
And the pain
of rain

Great entries!

YesNo: Your piece appropriately left me wondering why I’m here – and how I got here! I like the playfulness between the idea of a blank mind and one less clear…
cacian: I'm intrigued by “to think is to perfect rule” - will have to ponder that some…
Pendragon: What an enjoyable train of thought – I especially like the multiple ways you can read the ending.
Delta40: “Wonder sparks” – I want some!!! “Wonder driven” - would that we all were! “Wonder full”!!!
blank|verse: Both silly and profound – wonderful!
MystyrMystyry: “The pain of rain” – many ways to read this: for some reason made me wonder about rain feeling pain - being so close to lightning must hurt!

There can only be one winner, though, so on this spooky day it goes to …

blank|verse!!!

Congrats! Your prize, to share with everyone … this quote from Einstein:

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
- Albert Einstein

Thanks Jaked, and congratulations to everyone who entered. :) And thanks for the Einstein quote - it puts me in mind of Wallace Stevens's famous introduction to his poem 'Man Carrying Thing': 'The poem must resist the intelligence | Almost successfully' - the effect of doing which, of course, is to put the reader into a state of wonder and awe, something Stevens's poetry does to me on a regular basis.

Anyway, on to the next competition. If I may, I'd like to suggest something slightly different. Instead of a theme, I would like people to rewrite an existing poem, by a published poet, but reduce it to its bare minimum. Create a minimalist version of a favourite or famous poem - one of Keats's odes perhaps, or an Emily Dickinson poem, or The Waste Land - I'm sure you get the idea and don't need me to tell you other famous poems. But I think I'd look more favourably on contemporary poems by living poets; in this case, providing links to the poems would be good, if possible, as I might not have read the original.

I'd also suggest not being too flippant by reducing poems to a single word - unless you've got a very good reason - or submitting one on Dante's The Divine Comedy that reads 'Hell, Purgatory, Heaven' or similar. Try to use the words in the original poem but create a new and imaginative minimalist poem in its own right. I hope that makes sense!

In short - a minimalist version of an existing poem.

Deadline: Saturday, 22nd November, 2014.

Good luck! b|v