And so the time has come again
To try to versify,
Distilling all an author's pain
To wine that makes you sigh,
Or to vinegar's disdain.
Whichever way, we seek our gain
And pass the time thereby.

These are all:

Really terrific prompts, folks!

Mike

............leg.

>>wishcometrue
Shut up

>>Anon Y Mous
NO U

>>Miller Minus
Thank you for picking the only good one 😎😎

>>Anon Y Mous
ok :(

No way! After all these years I FINALLY GOT A PROMPT PICKED!!!


AaaaaAAAAAaaaAaAaaaAAAAAAAAA!

>>Miller Minus
Alternative caption:
"I am feel uncomfortable when we are not about me?"

I'm a tad fuzzy on what's happened. Was she married to the first guy? I have to think not, since there was no mention made of why she could remarry. As a story, I like it, but as a romance, there's not a lot to hold onto. It seems like she comes to the realization she liked the first guy best, but then we're not given any reason why she actually liked him, beyond "he was better than Ethelbert," which isn't saying much. Ethelbert I at least understand. He plays a pretty standard role, but he does so effectively, at first seeming in earnest, but then only being interested in her for what he could take from her.

As a result, I appreciate this more from a construction perspective than a story one. The form is very tight. I only saw one minor hiccup in the meter:
im-POSS-I-ble, as I'd say it in normal speech, versus im-POSS-i-BLE. That's easy to gloss over, and I had to read it slowly to find even that one, so the form is well done.

First one I've read, so I don't have a comparison yet, but this is a good bar to set on the quality front.

I like the general message/topic here, and the sonnet-esque arrangement as well. Overall, I'm definitely picking up on the mood you intended to evoke, so that's a win in my book.

But I think I'm having a little bit of trouble with the meter here. At least, I assume that there is supposed to be a meter, because a rhyme scheme (which I clearly see) is really hard to support on its own without a consistent beat. There's a moment or two where I feel like I'm getting it, but truthfully, for the most part, I felt like I was stumbling. Rhymes alone don't quite give the reader enough information to know what to expect with each line, IMO.

So yeah, while my reading experience was a bit clunky, I did definitely like the little repetitions and parallelisms. Personally, I would prefer to lean more on metaphor/simile rather than trying to evoke specific images/memories, just because people emotionally react to these kinds of concrete concepts differently on an emotional level. But YMMV, so I'll be interested to see how other readers felt.

Thanks for submitting!

I really like the cool contrast here between the tones of the two stanzas. It does a good job of justifying the existence of the hidden stanza, and lends the piece a feeling of greater complexity.

I think my main personal issue with this one is that it doesn't feel particularly structured. I know I've said this before during previous poetry rounds, but I personally believe that even free verse needs some guiderails to stop it from becoming pretty-sounding prose. But I know that some people do disagree with me on this point, so I'll chalk it down to individual tastes. But personally I still would appreciate some repetitions or juxtapositions here, just to reinforce a sense of flow.

Other than that, though, I'd say this is pretty top-tier. Great imagery, great mood.

Thanks for submitting!

So this is someone dying of frostbite/hypothermia, right? I like the imagery. The structure isn't buying a lot, as there isn't a meter, and there's only one rhyme per stanza. Plus "fetus/greets us" is a weak rhyme.

The line that stood out to me is the one about lamb to the slaughter, because that seems to imply the person's fate is intentional, though I don't understand how. It wasn't until the end of that stanza it became apparent what was happening.

The last stanza is easily the best. It employs a lot of literary devices, and it juxtaposes a lot of incongruous things. Like I don't see how snowfall would fit with crumbling, unless it's actually an avalanche, but I still like the mood and image that creates. The silent frown, too, since frowns are silent by nature, so I don't understand why it's necessary to point that out, but I think that kind of dissonance is deliberate here. By the end, this really comes to its full potential.

I like the sentiment and the switch in mood here. The progression of the speaker's attitude is interesting to follow. If I have a complaint, it's that I don't see what being poetry buys you. If this was a prose monologue, it would be just as effective, so I don't get what being cast as verse does to enhance it. Where the line breaks occur, where the stanza breaks occur, none of that has any apparent meaning to me. Like how you put "happy" on a line by itself. I have to think that was a very deliberate decision, but I don't know what I'm supposed to get out of it.

Aside from not understanding why this needs to be poetry, I enjoyed it.

This doesn't appear to be something deep, just a riff on snowflakes. It has a feel of haiku to it, just because of the kinds of strange cadences that form often results in, and that fits with my understanding of what it's about, since haiku can frequently be little insights on nature. I'm not sure this one needs to be poetry either, but at least it doesn't sound like prose in its current form, so fair enough. Straightforward, pretty good, and an interesting departure from what would seem to make a good haiku theme.

I'll venture a guess that the misused archaic language wasn't on purpose. If it is deliberately wrong, then I'm missing the point of it. So I'll just say to research it so you can use it correctly.

Otherwise, is this about someone getting high from sniffing fumes? It's another entry that feels like it wouldn't have lost anything by being cast as prose instead. I'm not familiar enough with the formalized structure of an ode to say how well this follows it, and at this hour, I'm not going to look it up.

So many people are taking the prompt as relating to blizzard conditions, and this one seems to be more a "tunnel of light" kind of thing, so it's a refreshing angle. I can't say the arrangement of line breaks is something I can put a definite meaning to, but it does make things feel more inherently poetic. It does sit on the side of poetry for me, versus prose just being made to look like poetry. This does a good job of creating its mood. It's pretty abstract, which takes me out of my element in giving much useful analysis of it.

There's a definite rhyme scheme, but no meter. At least the rhymes do create a structure that makes it more inescapably poetry, though the plural "anecdotes" makes for a weak rhyme. Even without a meter, the corresponding lines are relatively close in syllable count, so they do loosely form a structure.

I'm undecided whether this is about someone losing their memory, or someone just hoping they've left behind a legacy of some value. Either one can be a painful realization to come to at the end of life. Maybe it's both?

I think it would have carried more power if it had used some specific examples. It deals entirely in generalities, and ones that pretty much anyone would have worried about at some point in their lives, so I think it's on the vague side to have that real impact. What are some of these speeches that the narrator imagines people making? What are some traces of the memories that are slipping away? That's what makes it personal. I guess it's different whether you want me to identify with the narrator or ask these questions of myself, but in the latter case, it's not really inviting me to.

When I first read this:

Thursday morning, I found it doing all the things I like "free verse" to do. The scattering of snowflake imagery just made me grin, and it immediately to the top of my ballot.

Then I came back Friday morning, saw >>Bachiavellian's comment about the hidden lines, selected the text, read the new lines, and found myself frowning.

I need to think about why it's affecting me this way...

Mike

It wasn't until now I saw the hidden lines. They feel... incongruous, I think? The more apparent lines have a more whimsical look at snowflakes, while the hidden ones are hyper-focused on the near-death state of hibernation. It's fitting, maybe, that those lines are hidden like the animals in their burrows, but it's a pretty big split in mood, and I don't really see the point of juxtaposing those, or what "love" has to do with it.

It's kind of a jarring mood change for someone like me, who doesn't see the hidden part until later. If I'd been able to take it as a single unit when I first read it, I don't think it would have been as severe an effect, but it still strikes me as odd. I'm not going to revise its placement on my ballot though.

The mix of imagery confuses me:

Words like "softly", "quietly", "love" and "wonder" on one side and "rend", "blinding", "twisting", and "mewling" on the other leave me without any clear idea of what the poem wants to be about. If the confusion I'm feeling is what the poem's about--the peace of death followed by the turmoil of the soul being wrenched from the body followed by the greater peace of dissolution--then I'd like more structure to support that. "Structured confusion," after all, is one valid definition of poetry. :)

So if that's what the poem's about, I'll suggest increasing the contrasts from beginning to middle to end. Make it more of a journey with more turbulance in the middle, and that'll shrink the question mark at the end of my "Is this what the poem's about?"

But then I've never liked riddles or magic tricks or practical jokes--which is maybe one reason I'm having such a negative reaction to learning about the hidden lines in "Fall to Rise"...

Mike

I really like the tight, staccato feel of each line. There's a punchiness here that comes through nicely, even though I would have liked just a little more definition in regards to the meter/syllable-count. The imagery is an overall hit for me, which really helps cement that the mood down.

I think I had a bit of trouble with understanding the last stanza, though. >>Pascoite touches on it a little bit, and while I agree with him that this is supposed to be describing an avalanche, I can't help but feel that I'm missing something that links this to the previous stanzas. It's a cost of dedicating yourself to the short-and-punchy style—sometimes not all of your meaning comes through.

Overall, though, I already mentioned that the mood and the imagery worked for me, so I ended up considering this piece as one of my favorites from this round.

Thanks for entering!

Nice:

I'm here once again, though, advocating for more structure. Like >>Pascoite says, make the line breaks and stanza breaks matter, but also make the word arrangement matter. As the universe gets smaller, for instance, take a word away from the phrase at each step: start with "the fucking universe is too damn big", then the next time have "the fucking universe is too big", then "the fucking universe is big", then at the switch in the middle of the poem it's just "the fucking universe". Maybe then expand the phrase back out each time with "small" from the middle to the end and tie that to the idea of the words we speak, throwing words up like load-bearing walls in an effort to keep the universe from collapsing around us.

I'd also suggest adding the word "whiteout" to the first stanza, maybe after the white dye/dying line. Use the repeated words to make the structure that the poem spins around.

Mike

I like the narrative arc here and the overall pacing of this one. Admittedly, it did take me two or three reads before I think I could understand the story the way you intended, but once I did, it made the experience that much more enjoyable. The beat and rhyme is on-point, and overall this just feels really good.

I think the biggest nitpicks I can bring up about this one are that firstly, as I mentioned earlier, it's a little hard to get an understanding of what's going on, especially on the first read. And secondly, the general hook of this one feels a little undefined; there's not much that immediately grabs interest or attention, at least to me. I think these two things might be playing into each other to some extent as well, since I definitely had more fun once I knew where things were going.

So overall, while I really can't criticize your poetic structure and flow, I think that in regards to the storytelling aspects, there could be room to make the plot feel more tangible. Still, this is definitely one of the entries this round that I ended up enjoying the most.

Thanks for poem-ing!

I like the concept of this on, with the formalized-esque praise of something as mundane as a bottle of whiteout. It's a creative idea, and I like the mood that it evokes.

Though, I think I might have to reflect some of what >>Pascoite says about how non-poem-y this feels. Free verse is always kind of hit or miss on a personal level, and I'm afraid I never really got into the flow of this one. I almost kind of wish that we spent more time evoking memories, imagery, or sensations, instead of the kind of dry high-level praising that fills up a lot of the wordcount. So basically, I think what I'm saying is that I kind of wanted this piece to lean a little more on the strengths that poetry has over prose. There's a fun idea here, and a little more attention to polishing poetic devices might help it come across more clearly.

Thanks for submitting!

This one's pretty ambitious with the mood it's going for and all of the different threads it tries to tie together. And I think I like the general scope of it.

Again, when it comes to free verse, things tend to be very subjective/personal, but I think my gut reaction is that this could use tidying up. I think I can kind of tell when and where you tried to inject some structure, but overall as a whole, it still comes across as relatively boneless. Which gives the piece a kind of meandering feeling that's hard to shake.

So in the end, I'd say to spend a little more time touching up on the parallelisms and repetitions to try to make them more of a contributing factor.

Thanks for entering!

I like how laser-focused this is on its imagery and mood. It helps give the poem a sense of definition, despite the free verse nature, and makes each word feel carefully selected.

Now, I'll have to admit that the whole heavenly rapture theme felt a little up-in-the-cloiuds to me (pun entirely intended). There's kind of an ethereal sense to the mood, since all of the imagery is so high-level, which made it difficult for me to really pin down the emotions concretely. I know that this is a really subjective level of critique here, but given how open-ended this piece seems be, I'm left drawing my own conclusions for a lot of my experience of this one.

So overall, good focus in a tight, punchy package, but IMO it could use a little more emotional grounding.

Thanks for writing!

We here have rhyme scheme like the waves
Receding feet, and lengths decrease
Or grow as thoughts receive surcease
While we pass time and fumble to our graves
Still hoping that our words might yet release
Greater moments.

Terse prose tries madly to unbend
Curls of thought like dried-up bugs
Mortality is corruption. So we end
With one last downer simile. Hugs!

COFFEE IN MY

mouth as I strive to summarize
transcendence
in flashes, eye candy

from word toil
semantic shackles

I twist and compose with the others in writing off
and writing up

to the promise
of the prize beyond the icons
ghosts in the medals.

My metric heart beats solidly
(As Amherst Belle's once did)
To fast and firmly nail a tale
Twixt Ego and the Id.

In pushing past my mortal woes
Eschewing lover's trust,
I reach the valley which one sees
When eyes have turned to dust.

when ideas are too damned big
to be dammed
they stretch over the page
and wander where there is room

and there is the nagging feeling

as new groups added
and schedules expand
without letup

...the nagging feeling that no time is enough.

How many layers of writeoff does it take to slay an idea?

Frigid similes * blanket the earth * to hide meaning
Hidden text lies under to spring surprise upon the unwary

Whiteout!
However much of it I doth spread upon the screen,
Still one sharp tap of cursor key
Brings past mistakes to light.

>>Pascoite
>>Bachiavellian
>>GroaningGreyAgony

Thanks for the comments, folks:

And congrats to our medalists! For me, the prompt instantly popped Robert W. Service into my head, the guy who wrote such classic poems of the Frozen North as "The Cremation of Sam McGhee" and "The Spell of the Yukon." So I thought I'd try my hand at that.

Again, I think this has the bones of something in it, but it'll take a couple or three revisions to get it all put together.

Mike

>>Bachiavellian, >>Pascoite, >>Baal Bunny, >>Baal Bunny, >>Pascoite

Fall to Rise

Thanks for the silver! The comments seem to be divided but are all appreciated.

I first thought of writing a snow poem and putting hidden snowflakes in it (the white asterisks) with extra spaces giving clues to their presence. Then I though of the latent life being covered by the snow, dormant and awaiting spring, and I 'buried' it likewise. I didn't have a deeper reason than this for interleaving the poems.

This isn't likely to ever see print, so I'll leave it as it stands.