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Things to Consider in Making a Choice:
- How well the poem incorporates the authlete’s assigned word.
- Technical elements: meter, rhyme, form, shape, and other poetic standards.
- Creativity: wordplay, imagery, unusual approach, etc.
- Subtle elements that make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
- Your overall response: emotional reaction such as admiration, tears, laughter, terror, or some indefinable feeling.
Here are the poems:
16-manifestation
HAPPY: a pantoum for a perfect day
By Renée M. LaTulippe
What manifestation of happy is this?
Striding outside where the grass greens my feet.
Dragonflies darting in dragony bliss.
Morning and I promenade down the street.
Striding outside, where the grass greens my feet,
I greet swooping bluebirds out-bluing the sky.
Morning and I promenade down the street:
We’re fluff of a milkweed, as soft as a sigh!
I greet swooping bluebirds, out bluing the sky…
“Tick tock!” say the shadows as sun pulls them long.
Like fluff of a milkweed, as soft as a sigh,
afternoon falls to the whip-poor-will’s song.
“Tick tock!” say the shadows as sun pulls them long,
dragonflies darting in dragony bliss.
An afternoon falls to the whip-poor-will’s song—
what manifestation of happy is this!
vs.
7-harbor
The Ex-Mermaid
By Marcus Ewert
She had a tail like knitted gems —
Now sneakers hide her blisters;
A sweatshop girl – she darns and hems —
Unthreaded from her sisters:
Her fearless and wave-racing kin —
Wild girls composed of ocean!
She lost them when she lost her fin,
With a vile gulp of potion.
Adrift on land for seven years,
(She once swam benthic trenches!)
Tonight she treads the human piers,
And something in her wrenches.
She shivers in her winter coat,
(Foam once sufficed to garb her!)
She wonders, “Will I sink or float?”
16-manifestation vs. 7-harbor: Which Poem Did You Prefer?
- 16-manifestation (Renée M. LaTulippe) (51%, 228 Votes)
- 7-harbor (Marcus Ewert) (49%, 217 Votes)
Total Voters: 445
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