REGIONAL SEMIFINALS: 16-impaled vs. 4-truce

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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:

16-impaled
Epitaph: In Memory of Rain
by Susan Taylor Brown

And when water freely flowed, we cheered
tiny seedlings impaled the crusted clay
giant sequoias stretched high to salute the sun
their roots anchored deep in the belly of the earth

tiny seedlings impaled the crusted clay
wildflowers carpeted canyons in a kaleidoscope of colors
their roots anchored deep in the belly of the earth
we danced at dawn to the music of birds and bees

wildflowers carpeted canyons in a kaleidoscope of colors
before the forest fell down around us
we danced at dawn to the music of birds and bees
until we squandered nature’s gift

before the forest fell down around us
giant sequoias stretched high to salute the sun
until we squandered nature’s gift
and when water ceased to flow, we wept.

vs.

4-truce
Rise to the Epic Challenge (This Means War)
by Greg Pincus

The battle lines are clearly drawn.
How brave we stand. How unafraid.
I know before the next day’s dawn
Sweet songs shall speak of heroes made.
My fellow men are by my side,
Each one but part of our great whole.
A truce we offered up – denied!
Now victory’s our goal.
Sudden cheers! Oh, startling noise!
With tension high, we must begin…
A kickball game! Girls challenge boys.
Rise up! (And please let us boys win.)

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!