NO!!! (Not poetry at all, thoughts on judging contests)
\nby cricketjeff on August 3, 2008.\u00a0 \u00a9 Jeff Green, All rights reserved
\nI cannot agree with the premise! Some of your list seem good and universally
\napplicable but none apply universally to all contests, few apply even to a
\nmajority. Poetry is not engineering you cannot take 8 parts poetic devices and
\nstir in 2 ounces of brevity and a foot and a half of balance. It is important
\nto consider all these things but they do not make poetry. For any given contest
\nI am judging I set my own criteria. If the contest calls for not more than 100
\nwords, I probably allow 110ish but would lean towards someone who obeyed the
\nrules, however if a truly great poem had 120 it may win. If I asked for poems
\non mountains Shakespeare might win talking of a hill. So my list of criteria
\nmay go<\/p>\n
Is it a great poem?
\nCan I justify it meeting the contest rules in some way?<\/p>\n
Now I take all the poems that meet my criteria and judge them against each
\nother.<\/p>\n
However you gave a list so let us work through them<\/p>\n
adherence to a contest prompt:- clearly this can be important if the contest is
\nset to get poems on a subject it matters, but in other contests the theme is
\nset just as a way of watering the flower of creativity. Before I can rank this
\nin importance I need to know the contest!<\/p>\n
vivid imagery;- can be marvellous but must a good poem have vivid imagery? Or
\nindeed any imagery at all? I do not believe it is essential.<\/p>\n
clear meaning;- I give you Jabberwocky!!! I think that trumps that quality!<\/p>\n
mechanics \u2013 grammar, spelling, tense\/person agreement, etc.;- NO! can matter a
\nlot but Bill Shakespeare managed to ignore all the rules!<\/p>\n
the balance between being obvious and obscure;- need there be a balance? There
\nare perfectly beautiful poems that are exact descriptions of a scene and as
\nobvious as you like and there are poems that are an abstract riot. I cannot
\npossibly rank this item.<\/p>\n
brevity;- You mean Paradise lost isn’t a good poem? Haiku are brief, heroic
\nodes can be long, not a quality I can judge by I am afraid<\/p>\n
emotional intensity;- Usually helps a poem but again does it have to be there?
\nNo.<\/p>\n
Whether it breaks\/adheres to traditional form (if it\u2019s a form poem) or is a
\nnewly introduced hybrid form well this matters if you are setting a form
\ncontest but if a poem sounds better with an acephalic line or with an
\nanapaestic foot creeping in unannounced I say blow the form and go with what
\nsounds best (That is very often the correct form but not always)<\/p>\n
freshness (i.e. not-clich\u00e9);- we have had this before! If it sounds beautiful
\nwho cares that you rhymed June with moon and tune, it is hard to make cliches
\nsound good, but a good enough poet will do it<\/p>\n
poetic device;- If they sound good great if they sound bad get rid of them<\/p>\n
Now of course you have to judge my efforts!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NO!!! (Not poetry at all, thoughts on judging contests) by cricketjeff on August 3, 2008.\u00a0 \u00a9 Jeff Green, All rights reserved I cannot agree with the premise! Some of your list seem good and universally applicable but none apply universally to all contests, few apply even to a majority. Poetry is not engineering you cannot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":9730,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3080","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8428,"href":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3080\/revisions\/8428"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}