ROUND ONE: 4-bent vs. 13-harrumph

^{[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:

4-bent
Road Token
by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
 
I kicked a small stone with the toe of my shoe.
It clickety skipped like a silvery toad.
I bent down, took, tucked it inside of my pocket.
It tickles my memories of taking that road.
 
For stones murmur mysteries.  Rocks giggle riddles.
Pebbles tell poems of people long dead.
Reach in your pocket.  You may find a secret.
All stones are old stories that long to be read.

vs.

13-harrumph
Harrumph!
by Jone Mac

Capybara galumphs to lunch.
She’ll meet her friend for honeyed tea,
served with salumptious grass to munch.
Capybara galumphs with glee.

“Today for lunch, it’s celery crunch.”
They spy on the outdoor marquee.
Capybara sits and cries a bunch.
They then harrumph, “This simply cannot be!”

VOTE NOW!

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