Form Poem Contest

[Dark Muse]

Last Breath of the Dryad

Her blood seeps out with weeping sap
watching her life wither away
the rings of time a vanishing map.

Shuddering as a trembling leaf in dismay
lover oak felled beneath the axe man's blade
the body and heart of her soul fades to gray.

No longer will she paint the shade
every stroke rips her in shreds of pain
by roots which once sheltered her life betrayed.

Silent screams offered all in vain
splintered fragments of dreams take flight
and never again will she waken to the rain.

and as the tree falls at last, so dies the final light
a love now and forever blind to human sight.

[TheFifthElement]

Another excellent entry, thanks DM.

It's going to be a tough choice Still two weeks to submit your entries.

[firefangled]

The field leans like shoal grass where the back bay
bends ‘round jetties in the shallow flats,
as the wind silvers the leaves and grasses lay

down their browning blades in autumn mats
of shadows dropped from a clouding sky,
and teatime flowers bow and tip their hats.

The day turns light toward the west and I,
moored in time, watch the world course by and reel
across a page, my hand a stranger to my eye.

Beyond the dunes, birds cry from salt marsh creels
concealed in palms; the waves crash in the earth’s shell―
the holder’s hand and ear unseen―the sun kneels

before the night where yesterday’s stars that fell
from unknown heights were discarded with a page
where emptiness eclipsed what I had tried to tell.

Yellow moon on the cool grass and the black bay,
inspire this night and lead me to what I need to say.




© Copyright 2010

[blank|verse]

Seagull

I’ve seen you on my way to work:
haranguing pheasants,
blueing the air with your squawks,

then bunking over the fence
to the school where my sister taught.
She says you cause quite a nuisance,

swirling about by the window, caught
like a crisp packet blown in the breeze,
and staring at the bad kid sat

where bad kids sit. One look and he's
gone: flapping round the room for a laugh,
caw-cawing, ignoring the pleas

to stop treating the board as a cliff.
He screams at you still hanging there:
you scream straight back – f-ck off ! f-ck off !

Later on, I'm leaving work, and wonder where you are.
Then see you've striped your sh-t across my car.

[MorpheusSandman]

I seem to always struggle with this form and I don't know why. I'll really try to work on something and post it before the deadline.

[Virgil]

This was not an easy form, at least not for English. Here's my entry.

The Fall

Clamp the weight and curl it up,
The muscle distends before it fails;
The back folds over into a cup,

I lift to become as hard as nails.
Reflected in the silver glass,
The bicep rounds through other veils;

The mind looks inward to surpass
Shoulders, arms, and masculine chest.
Body disputes the soul, fixed mass


Inverts, metal strains, becomes stressed,
The mutability of steel.
The flesh curves, falters, crests,

What’s there is not there to conceal
The resolution but reveals
In shades the everlasting deal.


The broken body falls, doubts, feels
Gathers itself up, rises, heals.

[PrinceMyshkin]

This was not an easy form, at least not for English. Here's my entry.

It may not have been "easy" in English - I doubt it would have been easier in Slovak - but you made it seem easy and crafted novel but well-fitting rhymes.

[TheFifthElement]

Thanks for the excellent entries everyone. The contest is now closed. Results will follow.

[TheFifthElement]

I think the first, and most important thing to say, is that these were all great poems. It’s a tricky, tricky form. Rhyming doesn’t come easily in the English language and the rhyme scheme of this form is complex. It is hard to create a poem which seamlessly uses the form without convolutions or awkwardness.

All these poems were great poems. You made it a very difficult choice for me But a winner must be chosen, so without further ado, here are the results.

Virgil
I loved the theme of the poem and the way it follows through. The poem strikes a very masculine chord, both directly and indirectly with lines such as this:

Reflected in the silver glass,
The bicep rounds through other veils;

The mind looks inward to surpass
Shoulders, arms, and masculine chest.

and the addition of the mechanical/engineering overtones, like here:

Body disputes the soul, fixed mass


Inverts, metal strains, becomes stressed,
The mutability of steel.

which is really nicely done. You handle the rhyme scheme well and I love the way it end with healing, such a positive note.

Pendragon
As always Pen you’re poems are wrought with emotion, beautiful and terrifying, a real emotional journey. This poem made me sad and I’m torn whether the ending is a message of hope or resignation. I’d like to think hope, but the rawness of the emotion makes me feel resignation. A heartfelt, heart-wrenching poem.
I loved this line in particular:

Time is an enemy that makes old men out of boys,

because it is so true. Our bodies may decay on the outside, but on the inside we’re still the same person we were as a child.
I hope the writing of this was a carthartic process Pen, and thank you, as always, for sharing so much of yourself in such poetic form.

blank|verse
Your poem was the most original, most contemporary out of the submissions. It really made me smile. The theme was interesting and well handled, somewhat coarse but I like it better for that. I loved the idea of ‘blueing the air’ and ‘haranguing pheasants’ I think you have a real talent for observation, and a wry sense of humour which comes across in the piece, especially in the ending. You’ve really captured the seagull well. I loved this part

swirling about by the window, caught
like a crisp packet blown in the breeze,
and staring at the bad kid sat

where bad kids sit.

However, in some places I found the observance to the rhyming scheme a bit too tenuous – and as the poem is decided on form I didn’t feel I could pick this as the winner, though, in truth, it is my favourite amongst all the poems submitted. Excellent work.

Dark Muse
I loved the theme of this poem and you worked the rhyme scheme really well throughout. Again, this was a sad poem, sad because, as is often the case, the terrible wrong could so easily have been avoided. Your poem is unflinching against the brutality of the act, which makes for painful reading in parts and yet it is right to be unflinching. There’s such finality in this line:

and never again will she waken to the rain.

and I loved the ‘rings of time a vanishing map’ and the idea of ‘a love now and forever blind to human sight’. A beautiful, painful poem.

firefangled
As always there is so much to your poetry I became almost lost, lost in the dense musicality of the words and images. It is impressive that in amongst all of this you retained faithfulness to the form. In some respects this poem reminds me of Stevens’ The House is Quiet and the World is Calm which is one of my favourite of Stevens’ poems, perhaps it is the reference to the ‘page’ which creates this link? I’m not sure. This part is wonderful:

The day turns light toward the west and I,
moored in time, watch the world course by and reel
across a page, my hand a stranger to my eye.

and I love the way you present nature throughout the poem, a natural world you are somehow separate from and yet intrinsically linked to. There’s a sense of need too, as though you need the world to give you poetry and yet somehow ‘even the stars are not enough’. Yes, I liked this poem a great deal.

But the winner, for me, was PrinceMyshkin’s untitled poem. This wins, for me, because of the way the form is invisibly knitted into the structure of the poem, so much so that the form becomes almost invisible. It’s almost effortless, though of course it is probably truer to say that the effort is cleverly concealed. The poem is deceptively simple, it’s theme one of identity, frailty, mystery, finding oneself? Perhaps? There’s also a sense of something untamed, perhaps it is the use of the word ‘tart’ which struck me straightaway as somewhat brave and fitting, and of course the lovely couplet at the end:

frightened, alone, and yet beguiled
by the mystery, unfolding, but forever wild.

which is a wonderful way to look at it: ‘beguiled by the mystery unfolding’. Yes, that is life: scary, out of control and fascinating. Excellent.

So, congratulations PrinceMyshkin you are the winner. Could you please select the next form?

[PrinceMyshkin]

Frankly, I don't know whether I'm more gratified or astonished. There are at least two others I'd have chosen ahead of mine!

As to the next contest, I don't know whether this next form has a name but a stunning example of it can be seen at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15301

That would be ABABCC, and the C rhyme becomes the opening one of the next verse: CDCDEE and so on.

As for a deadline, shall we say a month from now, March 21?

[Virgil]

In the heart of the heart
lies the mystery of who we are:
queen, angel, saviour, tart.

And we can never get very far
from our origins, however hard we try,
or from our guiding star.

You may listen to us laugh or cry.
You will hear the same solitary child
who, helpless, watches the world go by,

frightened, alone, and yet beguiled
by the mystery, unfolding, but forever wild.

I had not read the other poems. That is wonderful Prince, and I burst out lughing with the "queen, angel, savior, tart" line. I'm trying to recall the rhetorical term for such humor. I'm thinking of litotes, but it's not excatly that, I don't think. But whatever, very nice poem.

Thank you for your kind words Fifth.

I'm going to put my poem in my blog if anyone wants to comment on it.

[firefangled]

A well deserved congratulations, Prince. Yours would have been my choice as well for the very reasons Fifth explained.

For someone who has said many times that he eschews formal poetry structures, you were very skilled at one of the most difficult ones.

Il miglior fabbro!

[Pendragon]

Nice going, Jer! Poetry from you flows like a river!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Nice going, Jer! Poetry from you flows like a river!

Many thanks, Pen. Your simile, however, reminds me of this joke:

When the chief rabbi of the community lay dying, his disciples lined up for a last word with him. At the very end of the line, the youngest of the disciples was afraid that the rabbi might pass on before he the disciple got to speak with him, so he nudged the man just ahead of him:

"Please," he said, "ask the Rabbi, what is the meaning of life?"

The message went up the line, disciple after disciple, and finally the answer came back:

"The Rabbi says, 'Life is like a river...'"

"'Life is like a river'? I don't understand..."

Again the message went up the line and again a message came back:

"The Rabbi says, 'Life is not like a river?'"

[AuntShecky]

Congratulations, Prince!

I believe you cited the Snodgrass poem to me before, and I can't remember if I ever found the name of the form, but I'll keep looking.

So far I found this:
http://www.enotes.com/april-inventor...pril-inventory

which states that the poem consists of ten 6-line stanzas, in iambic tetrameter with the rhyme scheme ababcc. At first I thought it was a Burns' stanza (a la Robert) but Robbie alternates two meters. To me, the stanza is very much like a "sestet," the second half of an Italian or Petrarchian sonnet.

My question is -- surely you don't want all of us to write a full 60 lines, do ya? (I know what you're going to say "Don't call me 'Shirley.")