Form Poem Contest

[Niamh]

You can only submit one entry. Thank you for your poem. Welcome to litnet steveH!

Six days left! Ant other takers?

[SteveH]

Thanx, Niamh!

[Niamh]

three days left for entries!

[autolycus]

A serenade is coursing through my gut:
The wine and other wine and soup and beer,
The pesky discourse of the radiant slut,
The urinary moiety of fear.
Still here to come the stew of Irish style
That loiters with a cannibal intent,
A battery of a salt-and-pepper guile
Provoking now dyspeptic accident.

Then comes the coffee and the last goodbye.
And suddenly the shock is too damn near;
A last tear for the last girl of my eye.
My tent! My hut! My residence so dear!
The lawyers and their wallet-turning thugs
Make alimonious hell of secret hugs.

=====
Note: As Shakespeare did, I have bent the iambic pentameter for euphony and variety. So sue me. *grin*

[Niamh]

thanks for your entry Auto!
tomorrow is last day for entries!

[Lily Adams]

*shuffles in*

Mine, since everyone wants me to enter:

Hark, turn your face upward to the night sky
which Nyx has spread her dark torn wings across.
The tears reveal glowing orbs up so high
and they shine brightly for the daytime's loss.
Look closely and see the clusters of light
turn into a stunning great galaxy.
Softly fall upon your face stardust might
as the glowing stars sway and dance lightly.
Glowing blues, yellows, and reds leap as one
and too soon sadly must shrink and decease.
Mourn not: those cherished orbs are not done:
they shall return to shower Earth with peace.
For every death oh so grevious
a re-birth occurs which is glorious.

[Niamh]

You just made it lily!
Competition closes at 12am tonight! will have results hopefully by thursday!

[Niamh]

Well this round is now over so its time to choose a winner! Like Pendragon i'm gonna go through each poem separately.
Adolescent09

Adole i really liked your entry and you made a very good attempt of the form! I really liked these to lines most, But i felt that it needed to conclude the sonnet as a whole.

Black Streets Stalk Peter

He turns lanes, hits a pole, streaking scarlet
It might've been worse if he had struck a harlot

Pendragon

Pen i love the theme of your sonnet, it really worked well with this form. I must admit i loved your Sestet. It's almost cunning, if thats the right word for it! Congrats!

Sonnet For the Ripper


Drop off another dispatch to the old post, now me luv—
Written in red ink since the proper red stuff has congealed!
Hee-hee! Bet I give the Inspector the fits with this stuff!
Could he but read between the lines, what secrets would be revealed!
But come now, Mary, don’t rise, stay flat off your back:
As you must! Hee-hee! Here’s a toast to saucy old Jack!

Pendragon
© 4/30/07

Petrarchs love

Well Petrarch, you understood me in the end. This is a wonderful sonnet, so full of meaning and it stirs the emotion. i think the most important part of a sonnet is the strength of the concluding couplet. Yours makes one want to read it again and again. Weldone.

Scene in a Home

"Still life of a bowl of fruit and flowers
Painted on a summer’s day and filled with light,"


"Of little things enjoyed while she, in quiet hours,
Painted the still life of a bowl of fruit and flowers. "

Nick Adams

Nick this was a nice poem but unfortunately, as i said in a previous post, the form wasnt right and needed ajustment. Sorry. i really liked this stanza though.

What love! Husband and wife for oaths exchanged;

What lust! A farmer this mistress made.
More acres to invest,
so depletes the pond within barren land.

SteveH

Like Petrarch your poem does justice to the form, which you already have an understanding of. I also liked the theme. It is a wonderful tribute. I particularly liked these lines. Weldone and thank you for your entry!

On William Dyce's 'Pegwell Bay, a recollection of October 5th, 1858'

"A child who holds a spade is gazing at
Some distant scene or object off the land."

"New knowledge strains old certainties. The child
Is looking, maybe, at a coming world."

Autolycus

Another well written Sonnet in the form. there is a great feel to the rhyme of the Sonnet. weldone! I really liked these lines, particularly the last one. I like it!

"A last tear for the last girl of my eye."

"The lawyers and their wallet-turning thugs
Make alimonious hell of secret hugs."

=====
Note: As Shakespeare did, I have bent the iambic pentameter for euphony and variety. So sue me. *grin*

Lily Adams

Lily i posted your intire poem as i wanted to see if it worked with the petrarchan lay out and i think it does! I love the imagery. To me i feel that it does capture the essense of the night sky. A remarkable poem for someone so young!

Hark, turn your face upward to the night sky
which Nyx has spread her dark torn wings across.
The tears reveal glowing orbs up so high
and they shine brightly for the daytime's loss.
Look closely and see the clusters of light
turn into a stunning great galaxy.
Softly fall upon your face stardust might
as the glowing stars sway and dance lightly.

Glowing blues, yellows, and reds leap as one
and too soon sadly must shrink and decease.
Mourn not: those cherished orbs are not done:
they shall return to shower Earth with peace.
For every death oh so grevious
a re-birth occurs which is glorious.

i have had the same problem that Pendragon had in the last round. I am finding it very hard to choose a winner as most of the poems are of great standard.
The talent of the entrants is remarkable and i would like to thank everyone who has entered the competition.
Nick thanks for entering
Adol, and Pen your talent never ceases to amaze me!
Lily, for a fourteen year old, you are on your way to being a very talented poet. Stick to the form and stick to what you like and Know!
Petrarch and Autolycus, Your poems both contained strength and emotion.
And SteveH, your knowledge of the form, meant that you could work that theme into the form quite well.
But alas i can only select one winner and the winner is Petrarchs Love.
I choose your Sonnet not only for the form structure but also for the theme and your amazing couplet. As steveH mentioned previously it went full circle, ending in a darker note than what it began with, taking in the view of the first few lines as a memory in the last.
Three cheers for Petrarch!

[NickAdams]

Niamh,

Thank you. I never had a chance to do another one, but I'm ready for the next go.

[Niamh]

No worries Nick! The next form is up to Petrarch so we all have to be patient. Should be interesting!

[Petrarch's Love]

Wow, thank you Niamh. I'm honored to be chosen from amongst so many talented sonneteers.

Also, thanks to Steve H. for your kind words about my poem, which I had somehow missed earlier. By the way, Steve, welcome to the forums, and I also like your sonnet on the painting. You should give our picture poetry contest a try. I bet you would do well.

Now I've got to go scratch my head and come up with a form for all these talented poets to write in. I'll post as soon as I come up with it, but first I need to go eat dinner.

[Niamh]

Congratulations Petrarch! Dont leave us waiting too long!

[Petrarch's Love]

No more waiting. Sorry about that. Got completely distracted last night and neglected to come back and post.

For the form this round I thought perhaps a sestina, but that's a rather long undertaking, so instead I'll suggest a variant on the sestina, which as far as I know I've invented, and which I'll call the Quatrina. The quatrina consists of four quatrains and the lines of each quatrain end in the same four words, but in different order. Here's a little outline of what the ending words for the lines would be for each quatrain:

Word 1
Word 2
Word 3
Word 4

Word 2
Word 3
Word 4
Word 1

Word 3
Word 4
Word 1
Word 2

Word 4
Word 1
Word 2
Word 3

To make it clearer here's an example I penned myself. Not a great poem since I both came up with the form and wrote this in about twenty minutes , but it will give you the idea and leave lots of room for you to improve on the form with your own brilliant style. Also, I chose to use a rhyme scheme, but I'll leave it up to the poets what sort of rhyme scheme they apply and whether they want to rhyme at all. Ditto with the meter. The main thing is to have the words repeated from stanza to stanza.

Breaking the tense stillness of the night,
Breaking the stifled darkness comes a song
From an apartment window square of light
Singing of the man that done her wrong.

In rich alto tones song follows song
Making a gospel shift to souls that find the light
After long blindness and long living wrong.
Awake! Yes Lord, awake from spiritual night.

And the jewel toned notes float smooth and light
Coloring all the world right where it was wrong
Warming the cold heart of the friendless night
Until an aching high note ends the final song.

The apartment window dims, and the lonely wrong
Of darkness returns to the street below. The night
Returns to its own strange smothered song
And I walk on beneath the yellowed city light.

[Petrarch's Love]

Forgot to post a deadline for this contest. I'm going to make it June 22nd, which should give me enough time to transplant myself back to California for the summer, and you enough time to write amazing poems.

[autolycus]

Congrats, Petrach's Love!

I am thankful to you that it is not a full 2/3 sestina, or it would probably have to end with a couplet containing all 4 words as well... *grin* and in iambic tetrameter or some such.