ROUND ONE: 2-prowl vs. 15-paternity

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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:

2-prowl
ON THE PROWL
by Donna Martin

Foul fowl on the prowl,
With gnashing beak and beastly scowl.
What hunger makes your tummy growl?
Little mice that dart and cowl,
Run away fast from that ol’ night owl!

vs.

15-paternity
Paternity Patience
by Linda Baie

The emperor penguin does not ignore
His given chore,  of perilous paternity.
He stands and waits.  He waits and stands.
It seems for all eternity.
 
While the momma empress swims for need
And gobbles feed, expressing her maternity.
She glides and dives; she dives and glides.
It appears with taciturnity.

VOTE NOW!

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