Poetry competition CLOSED 1st November 2020 10:14pm
WINNER
Eerie
View Profile Poems by Eerie
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RUNNERS-UP: PoetsRevenge and slipalong

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The Last Bargain

Ahavati
Tams
Tyrant of Words
United States 122awards
Joined 11th Apr 2015
Forum Posts: 16688

Ola, entrants!  

Due to Johnny's obnoxious connection today and the election results coming in tonight, we're delaying this announcement until tomorrow evening. We apologize for the inconvenience, but still have a few details to iron out, and won't be able to fully focus on them with the destiny of our country at stake!

poet Anonymous

A big thank you to all who paid tribute to this month's featured poets with unique emulations. As in previous challenges, these are very difficult to judge, and sometimes come down to a simple typo or grammatical error breaking a tie.

That being said, here are the following winners!

First Place: Beloved by Eerie

Congratulations! You get the Tropheee!

This is brimming with the essence of your chosen inspiration poem, "Little Flute". Tagore describes the soul as the breath of God, while the flutes are multiple human lifetimes through which music can be played differently. The narrator's hands are admittably small in comparison to the unlimited amount of God's breath his soul truly is.

We get the sense through your wording "In conscious moments, my fabric is forgotten;" that your narrator is physically dying in tandem with her spiritual affliction of feeling unworthy. She reaffirms her belief in having a worthwhile soul, which should cure her "foolish affliction". We are then left to wonder if her physically body will heal in correlation ..? You've given us the added bonus of suspense with this cliffhanger effect.

There is the message of endless replenishment in both poems, while your poem portrays it experienced through perception; we simply lose sight of it and cut ourselves off from the optimum spiritual health always available.

Your poem does suffer somewhat from your choice of enjambment. For instance, there is no benefit to injecting space within "In my hollowed cup". It just adds an unnecessary pause. The same with "to pour Your mercy;".

However, "These hands are [space] empty" does benefit because the resulting pause complements the sudden revelation of "empty" with an emptiness.

Though that's not the correct way to perform an emdash in Stanza 2 ( I, JohnnyBlaze, am guilty of numerous dash abuses that I must someday correct before publishing anything ), we are happy to see you attempt such where it was needed. A semicolon was also an option.

Meanwhile, an ellipsis would be a more suitable choice instead of the semicolon in Stanza 3 because you halted the presentation of your list that didn't contain any conjunction.

In conscious moments, my fabric is forgotten;
the spirit is no longer fine within me. I am nothing,

dust of the earth, fashioned by the One who blew life
into this soul- what have I to offer? These hands are

empty, this heart is broken, my eyes have fallen away
in tides of deceit; I've abandoned the one true Love.

It is in my house of foolish affliction that I hear Your still
voice, and a yearning for grace washes over me.

Divinity does not ask for ascetic actions. The asking
is of love and goodwill, truth and courage. In my

hollowed cup there is room for You to pour Your
mercy; I have found favor with my Beloved

====================

Second: Poems (The One Light)  by PoetsRevenge

It's Tagore all the way! And with an abundance of rhythm, but minus the excess wordage.

We isolated two commas that should be an endstop, emdash, or semicolon.

And we found another instance where a comma should be.

'These paper boats of mine are meant to dance
 on the ripples of hours,
 and not to reach any destination.'

              - Rabindranath Tagore


To wherein falls the one light,
there my heart is full of Thou;
you, the one who sets me free
is the one to whom I belong and flee;
I am in her, she in I[[,]] we are the one love
boundless as sky.

The mystery is without end
but in the one light exists my true friend.
I see it afar[[,]] I play on its shores,
as ever it glints and winks and lures.
I cannot reach it[[ ]]but it finds every corner of me:
She, the one lotus to bloom long and sweet.
I cannot die where no flower can't live,
and here in my heart the one light softly gives.

====================

Third Place: In hurriedness and clamour by slipalong

In Tagore's poem, even Time itself is smitten with the beauty of the narrator's object of affection and wants to know her better, but ... she is a statue.

From any angle, at any point in her movement, Time could appreciate the beauty of a woman from birth to death. What is TIme but observable phenomena such as objects in linear motion, sounds in linear succession, etc? Unfortunately, the statue remains locked into position, nor has a voice to appreciate.

This is an example of extreme irony driving home the point that you have to imagine what is not readily available to you, or how else will you be able to experience it? In essence, Tagore is emphasizing you can experience anything you put your mind to.  

Slip, we feel the essence in your poem, that desire by your sculptor for the breath of soul to be instilled in his creation and for you both to experience the rush of Life as if lovers going over a waterfall together. This was beautifully expressed.

Punctuation wise:
- You have unecessary endstops in Line 1 and 7.
- There should be a comma after "pale".
- Line 4 should end with a question mark.
- The final line is missing its endstop.

A sculptor.? Make such pale cool limbs
with beauty and such curves endowed.
Could I pause, in hurried clamour
whereby pray to likeness.
Shallowness to skin and spirit warm its core
a mortal cloud, plucked from the dawn.
In supplication knelt before; I knew.
by whatever, the everyday and commonplace,
to blink and rub the eyes.
Find and hold the Buddha's countenance.  
Transcendental ingot borne.
Heart still beat the pulse.  
Handed, gifted on the thunders clap,
refreshed in quietness.
The pool beneath the waterfall,  
the weight of beauty from the rush,  
after all in love our hands are clasped

====================

Regret... by Anvinvil

Punctuation wise, you omitted three commas. Spelling wise, you left an "o" out of "too".

A beautiful call from deep in your soul, I listened[,] but did not hear.
My anger rose at your simple requests and you left with an ache in your heart.
When your love burned to[o] bright[,] I hid in fear of being blinded.
Now, I sit alone in the dark[,] in painful regret for what might have been.

The crucial element missing from your entry is the "why" your narrator did not hear, got angry, and hid.

In Tagore's poem, that element was his narrator being inconvenienced with unwanted interruptions --- to which he responded with rudeness; this behavior resulting in his loneliness. The message is that expressing disappointment others aren't living up to YOUR expectations will earn you zero friends.

~continued in the next post


poet Anonymous

Freedom... by Anvinvil

Punctuation wise, Line 4 is missing its endstop.

Line 1 would have benefitted from a semicolon or emdash at some point. Tagore wasn't concerned about economy in regards to wording, but this is so lengthy that it suffers from an excess of "small words" to keep it going --- "of" and "the" both appears 5X. In comparison, Line 6 is almost as long, but you only repeated "of", "to, and "be" 2X.

The absence of the anxiety of the unknown is what I wish for all my people and the loss of the ponderous weight of uncertainty of things to come.
Let false dreams in the nighttime of future realities and potentials be ignored.
May the curse of eternity pass us by.
Stay the course though the way be hard and the end be infinity
Vanquish the journey charted by fate, fixed and prescribed.
I wish for a world of individuals without constraints, free to be themselves, outside of what may be acceptable to some cosmic force from the sky

The problem with having selected this particular poem is that it is pretty straightforward; there is no deeper meaning to it. Tagore's narrator "claims" freedom for his people while your narrator "wishes" freedom for his people. That being said, you did not offer us much of anything in terms of fresh poetry.  

Perhaps this was a simple oversight, but you can see why we have to point out the glaring similarity. It borders on plagiarism. We had your two entries in the "Nothing But Color" comp removed because you were simply swapping characters, locations, and elements already established in what were more complex poems by Ai Ogawa.

====================

Jayne and James by nomoth

nomoth, the title offers no insight into the poem or its linked inspiration and vice versa. Two possible reasons for this : it's your personal style and your entry is diluted with another inspiration as indicated in your Notes.

Tagore's "I Will Not Let You Go"  is a lengthy poem about how it is not within our power to hold others back in their journeys, most notably Death; Life isn't meant to be permanent and we lose sight of that as we bunker in surrounding ourselves with attachments to things and people.

Another lesser message is that we truly do not let others go when we carry them all in our hearts and keep them alive in our thoughts. That is how the poem ends: the narrator's daughter left behind at home, yet still following him on his journey.

I honestly struggled with how your poem related to either of these messages, but Ahavati came to my rescue with the interpetation that it was about insomnia. Your presentation is stunning visually and the wording certainly encourages the mind to visualize.

=====================

The {Separate} Self by Eerie

Eerie, that you consciously divided the poem into two stanzas is crafty, as it reflects a becoming divorced from oneself and then reacquainted.

"Dungeon" by Tagore presents us with insurmountable high walls isolating the narrator from his "pure self". The walls are unnecessary beliefs about what the self is, as if bricks accumulating from childhood.

You did a great job swapping this concept with the contrast of empathy and a lack of empathy that becomes a dungeon your narrator slips into.

The comma in Line 10 is not necessary.

Once again, there are some enjambment issues.

For example, Line 6 would benefit greatly by replacing "a dark" with "the dark".

Lines 7 and 8 would read better rearranged without the "the":

"cloak shrugged from shoulders
of a diseased mind."    

Offsetting this, a couple of lines towards the end were brilliant enjambments.

The question of sociopathy    
hung like heavy doors,        
weathered and misshapen, hinges      
slightly buckled.        
Crippled compassion chose to       
hide itself in a dark        
cloak shrugged from the     
shoulders of a diseased mind.        
One lie thrust upon        
another, raped what was left; she        
crawled through her window        
of separate self.        
       
The total of empathy was        
a curious quotient;       
she could not find        
reason to deny herself.        
Light spiraled into       
gaps, illuminating old truths        
so rare they settled languidly        
against her bony cage.        
In time, she opened <-- brilliant
her eyes to clearly        
see how her light radiated.        
She had forgotten her <-- brilliant      
separate self.

====================

The Greatest Love Poem Never Published by wallyroo92

Wally, this entry was innovative and entertaining as heck, but lacking the moral lesson mentioned in the assessment of Anvinvil's.

And you seem to have you caught Comma Fever! There is an over abundance of commas parceling out independent statements in lengthy sentences.

Thus, we must refer you to Ahavati's Punctuation Workshop!

https://deepundergroundpoetry.com/forum/workshop/read/11235/


~continued in next post



poet Anonymous

=====================

RAKTAKARABI~ BLOOD OLEANDERS: From My Congolese Times… Towards The Light Of Liberation by summultima

Uma, this is the more compelling of your two entries, as it highly resonates with Tagore's "Ode To Africa".

We inserted bracketd commas [,] and dashes [~] wherever necessary to break up your "adjective clusters".

An endstop [.] was enacted at the very end, while two ellipsis are suggested as endstops [.]. because the following stanzas of each start fresh.

The word "eternal" we recommend striking because you used "eternally" in the previous line. These lines in particular are concerning, in which the suggested remedies are to drop the "an" and add "ly" to "radioactive".

of golden Love in eternally galvanising,  
radioactively booming spring fields.

Where parenthesis ( ) are used, unnecessary space was removed.

'its" in the final line should be capitalized.

I am her ‘Madaame’ Of Everything  
ingrained in her rarity flashing ivory smiles    
to her ever red[~]rising[,] simmering eyeful[~]suns  
in delicate armours of tearful[,] hanging glistens  
that she unfallibly holds within the kohl[~]  
black lashes that yearn[s] to touch  
skyhigh[,] liberating flights  
[space suggested]
(Yet, )mellowed down rustic[,]  
earthen tones of perseverance  
she heavily bears forevermore  
as weighing down destiny.. in those  
simplistic[,] mellowly beaming[~]rays  
she sprightly blooms with…  

her vivacious pagne’s striking  
colours try vainly to digest in her aching[~]  
darkness complexions (& deathly[~]dark)  
pangs of generational oppressions  

it surfaces as the dragging baritone  
of her (drowning in) densifying voice that  
further wants to scream aloud farther..  

all those Manioc Cassava Fufu Dumplings  
are almost the mimicking[,] maniacal monotones  
of a cheaply[,] starchy carb[~]food that are  
the enforced staple of a povery-stricken  
war[~]torn land .. miscreant(ly)~ (mis)designed  
by plundering cartels & dictatorships in labels  
of modern democracy...  scrapping them of their  
homely diamond[~]gleams & mineral alchemy  
of golden Love in an eternally galvanising[,]  
radioactive[ly] booming[,] eternal spring fields[.].  

Her, the force of Nature in the militarizing  
language of power & arrogance & lies[.].  

My passage through Her Elusive Darkness  
feels an echoing[,] motherly[,] wombing depth  
of an abyssal sanctum[~]sanctorum.. in  

labouring pains of her embryonic freedom  
of a primordial sunning (One~Singularity)  
conception  

that no meddling[,] divisive[,] middle men of  
dubious sophistications & but with (inner spiralling)  
in heady[,] toxic crowns of insane greediness  
will ever succeed in their nefarious plotting  

It’s Her Time. Ever (Been.) Then & Now & Forever.  
[its] SHE, (Births) The Light of Truth. (BRAVE) NEW WORLD[.]  

====================

Congratulations to everyone for quality entries; thank you again for honoring the classics. We hope to see you in our latest Classic Corner challenges currently underway. PLEASE familiarize yourself with the guidelines before entering the following:

Rita Dove
https://deepundergroundpoetry.com/forum/competitions/read/11642/

Lord Byron
https://deepundergroundpoetry.com/forum/competitions/read/11643/

And here is the poll link to determine who December's poets will be. Don't forget to nominate one female AND one male poet!

https://deepundergroundpoetry.com/forum/speakeasy/read/11641/




Eerie
Dangerous Mind
14awards
Joined 29th July 2018
Forum Posts: 891

Wow. This was unexpected. Thank you so much for the time and effort applied to the critique of my poems. Every time, I learn something new and valuable. Thank you for seeing value enough in my poem to have awarded it first place. I am truly honored.
Congrats to PoetsRevenge and slipalong for your placement, and congrats to everyone who participated. Everyone did such a wonderful job!!

poet Anonymous

Eerie said:Wow. This was unexpected. Thank you so much for the time and effort applied to the critique of my poems. Every time, I learn something new and valuable. Thank you for seeing value enough in my poem to have awarded it first place. I am truly honored.
Congrats to PoetsRevenge and slipalong for your placement, and congrats to everyone who participated. Everyone did such a wonderful job!!


You're welcome, Eerie. We are thrilled to see you coming back each month and giving the CCComps your best effort. You really put up two phenomenal entries this go around. If only we didn't have to choose one.

nomoth
Fire of Insight
United Kingdom 12awards
Joined 24th Mar 2019
Forum Posts: 481

Firstly  a big congrats to Eerie. a thoroughly deserved win, just awesome. And a big bravo to Poetsrevenge and slipalong,  again just superb pieces.

Thank you so much Johnny for your critique and complement too. Totally appreciated, you do force me to step back from my entries which I so should be forced to do as I can get too wrapped up in them without  perspective sometimes.

thanks again for both your hard work in your critiques. I am going to spend some time to go through each one for each piece and see what I can gain.

poet Anonymous

nomoth said:Firstly  a big congrats to Eerie. a thoroughly deserved win, just awesome. And a big bravo to Poetsrevenge and slipalong,  again just superb pieces.

Thank you so much Johnny for your critique and complement too. Totally appreciated, you do force me to step back from my entries which I so should be forced to do as I can get too wrapped up in them without  perspective sometimes.

thanks again for both your hard work in your critiques. I am going to spend some time to go through each one for each piece and see what I can gain.


You are most welcome, nomoth. Your poem in this competition was technically sound and you should be proud of it! You're an incredible writer who creates from a perspective that most wouldn't even know where to begin. We only become better writers in learning to understand you, which admittedly can be a challenge at times. You will only become a better writer knowing that you begin the journey for your readers who need a helping hand as they flesh out and finish your stories in their minds.

PoetsRevenge
Dangerous Mind
United States 29awards
Joined 30th June 2016
Forum Posts: 749

Congrats, Eerie, your poem read beautifuly and echoed Tagore's love theme.  I love how the entries in this comp were so poetically written yet still retained the essence of Tagore without the wordiness, real talent here in doing that.  Congrats to Slipalong as well for placing, I really liked your poem about love.  I'm honored to place among such talent.

Thanks so much to Johnny and Ahavati for hosting and carefully critiquing to help us improve, especially in the midst of such tumultuous world events.  Poetry is truly the great escape :)

poet Anonymous

PoetsRevenge said:Congrats, Eerie, your poem read beautifuly and echoed Tagore's love theme.  I love how the entries in this comp were so poetically written yet still retained the essence of Tagore without the wordiness, real talent here in doing that.  Congrats to Slipalong as well for placing, I really liked your poem about love.  I'm honored to place among such talent.

Thanks so much to Johnny and Ahavati for hosting and carefully critiquing to help us improve, especially in the midst of such tumultuous world events.  Poetry is truly the great escape :)


You're very welcome, PoetsRevenge. And thank you for always bringing your A  Game to these CCComps. They wouldn't ve the success they are without brave  and bold writers such as yourself.

PoetsRevenge
Dangerous Mind
United States 29awards
Joined 30th June 2016
Forum Posts: 749

JohnnyBlaze said:

You're very welcome, PoetsRevenge. And thank you for always bringing your A  Game to these CCComps. They wouldn't ve the success they are without brave  and bold writers such as yourself.


Aww, glad to hear it, it's my pleasure, I look forward to the next challenge :)

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