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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:
8-sojourn
Fox and Grouse
by Donna Smith
“Oh, do come right in, come into my house!
We’ll have a great time,” Said fox to the grouse.
“No, thank you, dear fox,” grouse had to decline.
“I think I’ll go home, it’s ‘most time to dine.”
“Stay here for dinner; sojourn for a while!
I’ll make you dessert,” he said with a smile.
“I’ll not be dessert nor put into chowder!”
Groused grouse to old fox. “You crafty, foul fowler!”
vs.
9-abetted
Mist’s Deed
by Stephanie Parsley
Mist abetted Cloud in masking Moon—
keeping Cow from jumping over Moon anytime soon,
making Little Dog cry and howl a dark tune,
and thwarting the exit of Dish and Spoon.
Finally, Cow jumped, belated,
Little Dog laughed, elated,
Dish and Spoon fled, as fated—
with all glad they’d waited ‘til Mist had abated.
VOTE NOW!
8-sojourn vs. 9-abetted: Which Poem Did You Prefer?
- 8-sojourn (Donna Smith) (53%, 72 Votes)
- 9-abetted (Stephanie Parsley) (47%, 65 Votes)
Total Voters: 137
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