Poetry Contest

[mir]

alright, since this thread doesn't seem to have attracted any more poems for a while, i'm going to say that the contest will be closed this Saturday at 10 AM Eastern Standard time (for a reference, it's 3:05 here right now.) so if anyone else wants to submit, please do so! and thanks for everybody who has done so so far!

[Virgil]

OK mir, I will try by saturday. But personal reasons of the last month have prevent me from focusing on anything creative.

[mir]

Okay . . . i guess i can extend the deadline a little longer; i just thought everybody had forgotten about it so it needed a revival.

But i might not be able to get to it until the sunday after next if i don't do it next weekend (this coming weekend, that is). is that okay with people?

[Virgil]

OK with me.

[Riesa]

Okay with me too, I haven't had a chance to try yet, though I'm afraid it's gonna be tough to beat Petrarch's .

[Riesa]

Solidly made, the inherited sacrificial drive
comes easy, taught by other, older
Goddesses of Wondering

Once, her unlined eyes mesmerized
While her brushed cotton softness
won her a place as the artist’s muse

now her embrace is useless,
her discarded passion rusts

A shabby box nests the
few articles of affection
she’s gathered
from him who,
when memory stirs,
checks to see
if she is still capable
of affecting,
he finds
she isn’t, and disregards
the sentiment for a more
tangible ornament,
unconcerned with the woman
forever poised to give all
at the cost of her own
fragile balance.


Mir, did you ever see the film Camille Claudel?

[Virgil]

OK, I got one in before the deadline.

The Recumbent

Oh those bitter mountain peaks
Thin to meager pennies.
The recumbent feels the fever
The heart recoils into itself
The eyes look back to youthful strife
The end is here, this was life.

Dance, dance, little girl, dance
With crazy legs and arms contort
Dance, dance, my little girl,
For life is short.

Once there was a spring day
With warm Italian sun
Promenade and cigarettes
Recumbents lay in honeymoon
Honeyed days of husband and wife
That was then, that was life.

Dance, dance, little girl, dance
With crazy legs and arms contort
Dance, dance, my little girl,
For life is short.

Now the recumbent rides in casket
And in procession stroll the living
To a place of green and water
Beneath a tree an open hole.
Love and flowers and tears so rife
But that was all, that was life.

Dance, dance, little girl, dance
With crazy legs and arms contort
Dance, dance, my little girl.

[mir]

OKAY!

sorry this is late, i had a lot more to do this weekend than i thought. and i wanted to write something about each poem, because i thought all of them were wonderful.

But anyways, first here is the picture again:


And the poems.

The Satan lured her
The Apple lured her
The Snake lured her

HE came back and saw us hiding,
HE found the Apocalypse absurd,
HE left us with a bane.

Now,

I stand here
I watch my posterity
I regret.

Snail, i didn't get this the first time i saw it. i sort of like that, though, because it made me have to think about what you were saying and try to interpret it. i love your last stanza, but i still have to say that the poem is confusing, especially in that it's hard to figure out if you're talking about Adam, Eve, or both, or something else. i think that it's a very good poem, but since you had to explain it to me before i got it, i couldn't choose it as the winner.

As I circumscribe a circle through the zodiac with my toe
I know
I stand at the center and all else expands outward from here
I realize
This is the only place that I have experienced since birth
I suppose
Others stand in the their center with me toes out
We dance

Orion, hello from Pittsburgh!

i liked your poem as well, especially the first and last lines. the last conpleted the imagery of the poem; the first was just a beautiful sentance that i thought was really cool. i did think that the poem could have used a bit of editing, especially in the little interspersing-lines - "I know", "I realize", "i suppose". But i still thought it was a great poem, and i hope you submit for the next contest!

According to Michelangelo
Statues are born, not made.
Their forms are waiting
In the hearts of marble blocks
And in the hot essence
Of liquid bronze.
They are waiting to be brought forth
From the passionate heat of fusing metals
Like infants into a crying world,
And to bestow on that world their beauty.

What then, of this aborted birth?
This monstrous, misshapen birth,
Lacking an arm, with a visage of half-melted skin,
Most of all, lacking the decency to emerge stillborn,
Lacking the decency to calm those flailing, living limbs
Which she presents open and willing
To the initiation
Of another birth.

Petrarch, your poem was very sequential, really telling a story and following a theme, something not many people did. i love some of your ideas - "Lacking the decency to emerge stillborn"; "the initiation of another birth". Your poem captured the contorted changelessness of the statue, forever stuck in a "monstrous, misshapen" form. i think that if the first stanza had been as good as the second, it might have been the winner. but i sort of felt that you really only hit your stride, and the rhythm you wanted, in the second part - although i do love the "infant into a crying world" in the first bit. i still thought that it was a wonderful poem, just a bit too storylike and not flowing enough in the first stanza.

Sculpting day.

I’m not wearing any clothes today.
The sculptor makes me strike a silly pose,
Balancing on my small and nimble toes.
He slowly begins to shape me out of clay.

The pose is getting too hard for me now.
All he shaped is my little, nimble fingers,
And meanwhile the sculptor lingers,
as he’s working on my frowning brow.

A five-minute break is what I need.
Drinking some booze and eating a cookie,
The sculptor thinks I’m a rookie!
I wouldn’t be if he took up some speed.

He’s working faster than before.
The clay is slipping through his hands,
And an almost finished statue stands,
When there is no more clay galore.

The left arm is still missing.
The sculptor tells me to stop posing
He is now done with all the shaping,
And I look like a freak gone fishing,
On a sculpting day.

Aimus, your poem really made me laugh. the first line is great! and a lot of the rest is very good and funny too, and keeps on track without becoming boring. however, i thought your poem could have used more editing - the rhythm was off in several places, and the rhymes didn't seem quite right to me, like "cookie" and "rookie". i did like your rhyme's form, though; i haven't seen that ABBA structure before and i thought the way you did it was really cool, especially when you moderated it in the last line. so good poem!

The Recumbent

Oh those bitter mountain peaks
Thin to meager pennies.
The recumbent feels the fever
The heart recoils into itself
The eyes look back to youthful strife
The end is here, this was life.

Dance, dance, little girl, dance
With crazy legs and arms contort
Dance, dance, my little girl,
For life is short.

Once there was a spring day
With warm Italian sun
Promenade and cigarettes
Recumbents lay in honeymoon
Honeyed days of husband and wife
That was then, that was life.

Dance, dance, little girl, dance
With crazy legs and arms contort
Dance, dance, my little girl,
For life is short.

Now the recumbent rides in casket
And in procession stroll the living
To a place of green and water
Beneath a tree an open hole.
Love and flowers and tears so rife
But that was all, that was life.

Dance, dance, little girl, dance
With crazy legs and arms contort
Dance, dance, my little girl.

One thing this poem did is teach me a new word! no, i didn't know what recumbent means. but all the same, Virgil, i liked this poem a lot even before dictionary'ing recumbent. i thought that you had a really cool idea - the quick phases of life, so dance if you can, while you can - if i got it right. but though your second and third long stanzas (the ones ending with "that was life") were very good, i thought the first one wasn't really connected. i did like the "dance, dance, little girl, dance" interludes, but i didn't really get the "recumbent" connection in places. However, as always, your writing makes me feel like finding out where you live, going over, shaking you, and saying "Teach me how to write!!!"

Solidly made, the inherited sacrificial drive
comes easy, taught by other, older
Goddesses of Wondering

Once, her unlined eyes mesmerized
While her brushed cotton softness
won her a place as the artist’s muse

now her embrace is useless,
her discarded passion rusts

A shabby box nests the
few articles of affection
she’s gathered
from him who,
when memory stirs,
checks to see
if she is still capable
of affecting,
he finds
she isn’t, and disregards
the sentiment for a more
tangible ornament,
unconcerned with the woman
forever poised to give all
at the cost of her own
fragile balance.

These last two poems, Riesa and Holograph's, made me wish that there could be allowed two winners for this contest. both these poems were beautiful. Riesa, the last part of your poem - the longest stanza - was absolutely wonderful, especially from the "Unconcerned with the woman" until the end. Your imagery is lovely, and i liked the way that you humanized the statue while still sort of keeping her confined in her bronze shell. But, though your poem was very good, it did have a few things that kept me from choosing it as the winner. A lot of the things you said were confusing, and didn't really connect to the picture - for instance, "brushed cotton softness", "shabby box", or the very first stanza. after the first two stanzas, i thought the rest was great - but i think that the poem could use a different beginning, and be a bit more true to the statue. unless i've gotten completely confused about what you were trying to say. but anyways, great poem, i had a lot of fun reading it.

The writhing past is cast
in weathered bronze

the changeless tides still
foaming at her rigid sides

[an eerie coo of rabid waves]

Push and pull
Waste and swell

cord grass beats against her thighs
the ocher skin of monotone
a broken statue’s metal sighs

[only the merry go round and
round on time’s decapitated rim]

Push and pull
Waste and swell

the vestige of a moving limb

Time has no head to rest no face
her neck is an industrial fence

one foot just one precarious knee
held high above her severed waist

What do they pray to?

Push and pull
Push and pull

Agony drunk with agony

Take her.

Holograph, your poem definitely gave me the most vivid images of any. the detached rhythm and the beautiful imagery, and the seeming disconnectedness the first time i read it, but which i was soon able to realize a common theme in - all of that made the poem a sort of great timeless, melancholy observation. i didn't really get the connection of several of the lines to the main idea - it was that the statue is like time, right? - but even when i didn't get them, they seemed to fit. you drew in a background for the sculpture, at least how i saw it; i felt like the statue was at the edge of a grey, endless sea, and i really felt something when i read the poem. Great job! can't wait to see your picture!

and thanks everybody for submitting - i loved all the poems.

[Petrarch's Love]

Congratulations Holograph!

And thanks for the comments Mir.

[Virgil]

Congratulations from me too Holograph. A very nice poem.

And thank you Mir.

[Riesa]

Congratulations Holograph!

Thanks for the comments mir. I'm glad you liked it, sorry it confused you. Ever since you posted the Rodin Pic, I was thinking of that film Camille Claudel, and those thoughts led to that poem, I suppose. Thanks for the comments!

[AimusSage]

Aye congrats Holograph. It's quite nice indeed

[holograph]

hey kids. mir, thank you so much for picking my scribbles as the winner of this very competetive, but very much fun, poetry contest. i don't think i deserved it. i read the one's everyone else posted and i thought, wow, i have no chance. virgil's, petrarch's riesa's aim's all were Amazing.

thanks again. I will post a cool pic, I promise. I need to be inspired.

[holograph]

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[holograph]

I'm not religious, but this painting by Dali struck me. I'm not going to judge based on how close the poems are to my interpretation of the piece. I will look at the poem as its own entity, like a new critic would. Have fun, don't rush and good luck amigos. --Alina

This one's called "The Cross of St. John" by Dali.