ROUND ONE: 8-thawed vs. 9-unnatural

^{[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:

8-thawed
Broken Soup
by Darren Sardelli

Before I thawed the frozen soup,
I dropped it on the floor.
It shattered like the purple vase
I elbowed at the store.
 
I couldn’t find a chunk of soup—
It thawed on Fluffy’s mat.
We’re now the only household
with a chicken-flavored cat!

vs.

9-unnatural
Free Range Deranged
by Robyn (Hood) Black

The chickens are chasing a fox.
The pigs are painting their stall.
The sheep are doing algebra.
But, wait! That is hardly all.

The cow’s giving pink lemonade.
The collie claims he’s master.
The rooster is lullabying
this unnatural disaster.

VOTE NOW!

 Loading ...

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