Sunday January 10th, 2010

The exercise:

With all of the entries in for the first round of Protag's Winter Poetry Tournament, I thought it would be fun to share with you the poems from various contributors to this blog. You get to see a lot of their poetry here, but what can they produce when they actually spend some time and effort on their work?

The challenge was relevant rhythm and here are the results:

Archi                Greg

Gwen                Mine

Feel free to read through the other entries as well, there is some truly great stuff in there. And it's only round one!

In other news, today's prompt is one I haven't used in a while, Dictionary.com's word of the day: onus.

Update:

AFC Word Count: 10,062
AFC Word Target: 10,000

Hurray, I was able to escape the weekend without falling behind again!

Mine:

"It's on you now."
She said with a smile,
As though she did not
Think it much of a trial.

"I will not fail."
He said with a nod,
As though he was not
About to face a god.

But in the end
The burden crushed him,
And life for her
Became so very grim.

3 comments:

Greg said...

No AFC update for us today? I know I've not commented much on your updates, but I've been following them :)

It's been an interesting first round, and I think all the poems you've listed have their merits. Darkliquid's appraisal of mine is pretty much dead on the money -- and as I'll post in reply to him, its because I don't understand why writing a poem with relevant rhythm is a challenge. A 'poem' without relevant rhythm isn't a poem (in my mind).

Your onus poem is good, although I think that the middle verse has been constrained a little by the rhyme scheme you picked.

Onus

Guilt trickles,
Like melting ice-cream,
Running down my fingers,
Along my arm,
And infuses into my spine,
Entirely unlike ice-cream.

It is a weight
That I hate
To have to carry,
Yet,
Without my guilt
I cannot truly say that I am me.

Guilt shapes,
My life
Into new dimensions.
I've learned to see the best
In the people that I meet.
But I still bear my guilt.

Glorya said...

@Eloo Sweet of you to link to everyone's poetry :)

Your poem [the one on here, not Protag] is very mysterious - not sure what to think of it. I agree with Greg that the middle is a little off, but I think it's more because "a god" seems to go a beat too long more than the structure being off.

Also - did you know "flibbertigibbet" was the word of the day a couple days ago? Now THAT would have inspired some interesting poetry ;)

@Greg Your line "entirely unlike icecream" made me smile :)

"Onus"

It's on us
Like
Tomorrow,
As it weights today
With debt:
It
Owns us.

Marc said...

Greg - there you go!

Agreed about the rhythm thing, though I just approached it as a challenge to pay extra attention to it.

We'll see what the other two judges have to say.

And I have to agree with Archi about that line :)

Glorya - yeah, I kind of half-arsed that one. Wasn't having the best writing day today.

Oh, I totally missed that! Man, missed opportunity :(

You did a lot with very little in yours, nicely done :)