REGIONAL SEMIFINALS: 11-scuttle vs. 7-heft

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The Poets’ Challenge: Each poet is assigned a single word based on their bracket seed, ranging from 1 (intuitive) to 16 (seemingly impossible). Poets must write a kid-appropriate poem using the prompted word in under 36 hours. Once both final poems have been received, they will be pasted into the body of this post, and then the reader poll will be open for voting.

Voter Instructions: Read each poem as many times as you’d like. Then use the poll to express your preference. Votes are counted in real time and cannot be changed once entered. As a guideline for voting, consider the criteria on which the contestants on the cooking show “Chopped” are evaluated: presentation, taste, and creativity. Translated roughly into poetry terms, presentation might include technical aspects such as meter, rhyme, form/shape, etc.; taste might be the net effect — did the poem move you to laugh, cry, think, kill, etc.; and creativity might include the poet’s approach toward a certain subject, image evocation, clever wordplay, etc.

“This is awesome, where can I find more?”: All results and scheduled matchups, including a glance at the round-by-round writing windows and voting windows, are visible from the Live Scoreboard page. In addition, results will be tweeted from @edecaria as they become final.

Here are the poems:

11-scuttle
FINAL PAGE OF OAK LEAF’S MEMOIR
by Mary Lee Hahn

I was the last one to leave.
 
The wind broke my will.
The cold was bitter. I was brittle.
I remember the skitter and scuttle
across the crust of the snow.
 
Days are longer now, wedged here in the ivy.
In the damp, I’m decomposing.
A daffodil drilled right through my middle.
 
All winter I dreamed
I’d banner a branch again come spring.
Now my destiny 
is organic energy.
Instead of aiming for the sky
my lot 
is to rot.

vs.

7-heft
A YEAR OF KENNINGS
by Julie Larios

Nest-chirp, feather-float,
lamb-laugh, wind-waft.

Lake-lap, night-smile,
flame-call, star-breeze.

Leaf-lift, mower-bite,
shovel-lug, hammer-heft.

Sky-scowl, snow-show,
sled-slip, face-freeze.

VOTE NOW!

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GET OUT THE VOTE. The average pairing in Round 1 generated 154 votes. The average pairing in Round 2 generated 178 votes. Use the share buttons below and mention the madness wherever you go so that these poems reach more kids! And remember, encourage voting on EVERY MATCHUP, not just this one!