Form Poem Contest

[firefangled]

The Form Poetry contest is now closed.

I will be posting the winner by Wednesday. It is going to be a tough pick.

[firefangled]

What a difficult job this is! My hat is off to all those who have ever been in this position.

The Litany form can allow for much diversity, even within its repetition. Each of you has proven this with your poems. There is so much talent, care, and respect for poetry evident in all these poems. A standing ovation from me to all entries.

Now for the hard part.

TheFifthElement
Fifth, your poem seemed to carry the reader through a life where all these moments were taken inside and then finally the earth itself, as if to heal it with all these human things.

Pendragon
Such an expression of devotion in Pen’s Marriage Litany. What magnificent wedding vows it would make!

Akakungfu
I liked the quiet, imperative nature of Venture All. We live with choices we make in life. The short lines with the specific selections for place are not at all simple in their meanings.

Lucidnightmares
I like that as I read I was not sure of what the speaker was trying to obliterate with this plea for forgetfulness, until the last line and then you used a tangible image to bring it home.

Adererodio
This litany demonstrates what is indicative of curses, in that they often end up involving the very thing the curse hopes to resolve or restore in some way.

Autolycus
I liked the wordplay and the comprehensive view of the written word. The ending was unexpected and delightful.

Barbara
If Emily Dickenson wrote litanies (maybe she did) this would be one. The last line gave me goose-bumps. When I finished the poem, the title hit me like a split atom.

Qimissung
What I liked especially was the way it expanded the meaning and love in something as simple as holding hands.

AuntShecky
I love the wit and sarcasm in this. Beatitudes with an attitude. Very nice how echo fits in with the litany.

Il Penseroso
Wonderful wordplay with the last line and a most amazing litany for what is reveal through and hidden from this complex lens.


Thanks again to everyone for your entries. They were all great litanies. I mean it sincerely when I say the choice was difficult. I started to list a top three, but I could not do it; they were all so good.

The one that I choose as the winner is Swallow, by TheFifthElement. I think perhaps it is where we are at this time in the world that a poem of healing touched me. Congratulations, Fifth, a remarkable poem!

And a final congratulations to all entries. I now relinquish the hot seat to TheFifthElement, and say BADABOOM!

[qimissung]

May I be the first to say CONGRATULATIONS!!!! to you, FifthElement. I thought your poem was terrific!

As were they all...

[autolycus]

Congratulations to the quintessence! *grin* I much enjoyed it.

[AuntShecky]

Congratulations to all who participated in this round of the form poetry contest. Thanks for your kind assessment of my little ditty, firefangled, but I have to tell you that "Echo" was the scorned lover of Narcissus, who was the speaker of this little litany. Narcissus is also the subject of the poem -- or maybe it's
Matthew McConaughey.

[firefangled]

Congratulations to all who participated in this round of the form poetry contest. Thanks for your kind assessment of my little ditty, firefangled, but I have to tell you that "Echo" was the scorned lover of Narcissus, who was the speaker of this little litany. Narcissus is also the subject of the poem -- or maybe it's
Matthew McConaughey.

I knew that, but I did not want to give it away. Depending on which Narcissus story you used he died, so I was glad to see him his conceited sassy self. I also had a weak feeling that this went beyond Narcissus into the original beatitudes and their somewhat condecending tone, but I said nah!
It is one of my favorite Spring flowers.

[TheFifthElement]

Thanks firefangled

and congrats to everyone who participated; there were lots of good poems, it must have been a difficult choice.

For the next round I'd like to select a form which we are probably all familiar with.

Haiku

Why, you might ask? Because I love them, and because to encompass the true spirit of haiku is more difficult than it seems.

So, what is haiku?

Haiku is a traditional Japanese lyric form of poetry with a strict syllable count (this may be varied in English haiku, but I'd like to stay traditional here) consisting of 17 syllables over three lines with a line count of 5,7,5. See the following example, one of the original haiku by the haiku master Basho:

All that remains of
those brave warriors' dreamings -
these summer grasses

Traditionally haiku have a placement in time. In Japanese haiku this was often achieved by reference to specific elements of nature, for example the 'summer grasses' as mentioned in the haiku above but you will see, if you read a number of traditional haiku, that it may be difficult to reference the poem to a particular time by western eyes, as per the following example also by Basho:

A dragonfly, trying to –
oops, hang on to the upside
of a blade of grass

this is because in Japanese tradition they would associate certain elements of nature, creatures, weather, astronomical bodies (reference to the moon would be, by poetic association, the harvest moon, and therefore autumn), with particular times of the year. In the above example it is the dragonfly itself which identifies the 'time' of the haiku.

Traditional haiku generally encapsulate a moment or an image and express it in terms of:

What (brave warriors) (dragonfly)
Where (in a field - denoted by grasses) (blade of grass)
When (summer) (the time of year when dragonflies were seen!)

So, I would like you to compose a haiku sticking to the three lines with a syllable count 5,7,5, with a placement in time, and addressing the question of What, Where and When as imaginatively and as subtly as you can!

Deadline for entries will be midnight of 3rd October (GMT).

Looking forward to some interesting entries

[Virgil]

Oooh, that's an easy form. I think I'll participate. I should be able to squeeze that in. Just to be clear, there is no subject to address. It's what we want as a subject, correct?

[barbara0207]

Congratulations, Fifth! A well-deserved win! And the traditional haiku is a very good choice. Maybe I can come up with something.

Thank you, firefangled, for your kind comment. I know how hard the job is ...

[alakungfu]

Congratulations, Fifth Element. Here's my haiku. I don't know if it answers all your criteria, but it's what I came up with.

beauty, cold and gone,
glossing vapid sillhouette,
striated lava

[TheFifthElement]

Oooh, that's an easy form. I think I'll participate. I should be able to squeeze that in. Just to be clear, there is no subject to address. It's what we want as a subject, correct?

Correct, you can choose the subject matter.

Easy?!

Great start alakungfu - keep 'em coming!

[rabid reader]

Dreaming an escape
Sleep soundly in an ally
Alone with no home

[autolycus]

White bear's last footprint
An invisible banner
Rippling in the heat

[Pendragon]

Good going, Fifth!

Grasshopper in fields
now reaped of their new harvest
will starve without food...

[firefangled]

we live entangled,
in the restless sleep of God,
dreams in a dim room