Judges Comments and Winning
Poems
I judged, as I always do, how
well the poems, from start to finish, accomplish what they set out to do,
how well-crafted, well-edited, engaging, and precise they are, how well they
work on the page.
-Dan Kaplan
Poem of the Year
Communion with the Deceased
This poet uses many of the tools at her/his disposal. The voice is
controlled and authoritative and imposes a rhythm fitting to and reflective
of the subject matter, moving from idea to idea seamlessly in its probe for
answers--and that’s why the ending packs such a punch, punctuating what
the
poem, in line 1, announces it will do (look for answers). The poem uses line
breaks well (“Better to know we loved her well/enough to leave well enough
alone”), at times moves elliptically (going from the previous sequence to
“It
is mid June”), which reflects the speaker’s precarious state of mind,
and uses internal rhyme (“June,” “lupine,” and “bloom”) to glue
ideas and images together. A
well-constructed, emotionally-risky piece.
- Dan Kaplan
Communion with the
Deceased
by MJM
Tell me something. What good could have come
from this? I'm prone in a wildflower
field in Eagle, Colorado. I have bourbon
in my glass and I don't drink. I feel queasy.
There is a gathering of people behind me under
a rented canopy, the white ones used for weddings
and times like these. All of them knew you better
than they know me. They carry canapés in their hands,
stories of your exploits on their lips, undigested grief
in that tender spot below the breastbone. I'm clawing
at the knapweed and they pretend there’s nothing
wrong with that because they've already decided
I'm deranged. What could I have told her about her
late father that she wouldn't have already known?
That a blackball in the bloodstream is as inheritable
as your fear of water, your love of Escher, your proclivity
for laughter? That we ignored the risks of genetic disease,
birthed her anyway? What good could have come
of her being? Better to know we loved her well
enough to leave well enough alone. It is mid June.
The lupine are late to bloom this high in the hills
and there is no child who requires an explanation
of love and death. Nor to lose to them either. No stranger
at a wake need lead her away from a mother who lays
in the dirt. All this is easier without her
than with her. It is, isn't it? Speak to me.
Second Place
love and thick metaphors
A creative, playful, intelligent piece that uses the page well. The voice is
engaging and confident, brash. The sections give the poem a regenerative
quality, the poet displaying her/his wit in take after take. Excellent word
choices in places (“bare geography”) that make the images pop off the
page. The use of other elements like numbers and various units of measure
add a satisfying visual element. -Dan Kaplan
love and thick metaphors
by Kathryn Koromilas
with a nod to Gerard Manley Hopkins
i.
if i pull a thick
metaphor
out of a thin
hat, will you bring your ruler?
ii.
measure this:
i slide down the curve of your spine and whisper Silk Smooth Paper
(thickness of metaphor, 385 gsm)
i tap the skin there, press keyboard-button bones
(size of metaphor, Lucida Sans 14 pt, Bold)
and make the word dapple
--i'm about to express how your skin is the sun peeking through the trees as
seen fragmented on bare geography--
iii.
someone said it's all about contraction; making a smaller simile. For
example:
the long version:
Wait, wait for me, will you? Adventure tells me I have to go. I'll be back.
Stay. Like An Obedient Pet. Stay. And if you close your heart to all the
others, I'll come back Like A Treat, Like A Fat Chicken Biscuit.
the short version:
Be my Penelope.
iv.
Aristotle didn't speak of thick or thin, just metafora--
giving you a name
taken from someone else--
You are my Ted
(as in Hughes, Poet-Man-God; height of metaphor, over 6ft tall),
my Sweet
thing (as in John or chocolate, weight of metaphor, 90 kilos or 250 grams,
respectively).
Diomedes didn't speak of size, either; but of shifting
meaning from proper to improper, for the sake of:
a. beauty (your dappled sunlight smile warms my brow)
b. necessity (i frame you, my dappled-red Picasso, in the tortured gallery
of my mind)
c. polish (your whisper, dappled promise of early afternoon in the park)
and d. emphasis (the dapple-drawn puzzle of your heart)
v.
sometimes i'll speak metaphors you won't notice, so familiar
by now (you're my Araki bud; my red
my red my red my red my red
rose; will love ever
bloom in the desert of your heart?),
they must have been vivid
once but they've shriveled;
melted fat into thin common bones.
Death does that.
vi.
watch me pull a thick metaphor
out of a thin hat, call me poet
and love me for it.
Third Place
Passenger Side
A quiet, subtle, melancholy piece. The strength of the poem is in its
careful selection of representative details and images (“sculpture of each
weed,” “fading billboards,” “agricultural lubricants”); look how
much work the single
word “hope” does. The poem is one long sentence, which means the poet
must vary the syntax to keep things interesting (which she/he does), and
gains momentum as it moves through the literal and metaphoric
“landscape.”
-Dan Kaplan
Passenger Side
by Dana Elaine Carr
So much more patient with intricacy,
even than in my youth,
when I won a reputation for complicating
anything I touched,
I gather the details of every landscape,
the flakes of paint on every abandoned barn,
the sculpture of each weed that grows
in the roadside ditch,
the precise way the tear in the banner
shows the sky, sings with the wind,
fading billboards with puzzling messages
about agricultural lubricants and God,
and signs offering bulbs free
to those who will plant them in hope.
