ROUND ONE: 3-mangled vs. 14-heretofore

^{[click image to view matchup in full screen in a new window.]}

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:

3-mangled
Red Riding Hood Went Ninja
by Renee LaTulippe

“For heaven’s sake, you stupid wolf,
I’ve had it up to here.
Just let me pass to Grandma’s house
or it will cost you dear.”
 
Karate chops and kicks ensued,
their limbs were all entangled.
Red Riding Hood went ninja, now
that wolf is good and mangled.

vs.

14-heretofore
The Tournament
by Patricia Nozell

Spake Herr Tortoise to Sir Rabbit           
As he crept across the floor,                       
“I shalt triumph yet again,                       
As I succeeded heretofore.”                       
 
Spake Sir Rabbit to Herr Tortoise           
With a sneer and nasty roar,                       
“Just ye wait, Master Tortoise,           
And I shalt even up thy score!”

VOTE NOW!

 Loading ...

Did you like this matchup? Show these poets your support by sharing this post now (see buttons below).