Eratosphere - Sonnet bake-off winners, 2013

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Sonnet bake-off winners, 2013

The votes are now tabulated, and there seems no need to keep up suspense. So -- the envelope, please!

Based on popular voting, the TOP THREE WINNERS of the 2013 Sonnet Bake-off are:

1. REQUITED LOVE by Matthew Buckley Smith (136 points)
2. LAST DANCE by Stephen T. Harvey (76 points)
3. CHILDHOOD by Elise Hempel (59 points)

Alex Pepple will contact the winning poets regarding publication of their sonnets.
Congratulations to them, and to all the finalists who are listed below:

FINALISTS (IN ORDER OF POSTING)

1. Elise Hempel (Childhood)
2. Jesse Anger (The Keepsake)
3. Diane Arnson Svartlien (On the Ubiquity of Mobile Devices)
4. Robert Crawford (Calypso Calls on Penelope)
5. Tim Murphy (Mower's Song)
6. Matthew Buckley Smith (Requited Love)
7. Janice Soderling (Film Noir)
8. Marly Youmans (The Baby and the Bathwater)
9. Stephen T. Harvey (Last Dance)
10, Peter Spagnuolo (For Two Lindens Newly Planted on Avenue D)

Also to be congratulated are the
HONORABLE MENTIONS (in alphabetical order by author)

Dave Condell - "Marvin"
Anna Evans - "Tornado Sky"
Claudia Gary - "Desserted"
Peter Goulding - "The Church of the Battered Biscuit Tin"
Simon Hunt - "Aubade: Auburn"
Siham Karami - "Distances"
Austin MacRae - "The Guest Room"
Mary McLean - "New Parents at Feng Sushi"
Donald Sheehy - "A Pine Parabolic"
Geertjan Wielenga - "A Bad Day for Kafka"

Finally, the judges' personal choices will be given in separate entries..

Thanks to all who entered and made the 2013 Eratosphere Sonnet Bake-off a success.

Judge's Choices for Gail

Based on technical proficiency, verbal felicity, and personal appeal, my choices for the top three sonnets are:
1. The Baby and the Bathwater
2. Last Dance
3. Calypso Talks To Penelope

First of all, congratulations to Matthew Buckley Smith, Stephen T. Harvey and Elise Hempel on placing first, second and third, respectively, in the popular vote. Also congratulations to all the poets whose sonnets were named as finalists and honorable mentions.

*************************************

On July 21, Kim Bridgford posted the following question on Facebook: “When is a sonnet not a sonnet?”

I wondered whether she’d been looking in on the various sonnets proposed by Gail and me as finalists in this year’s Eratosphere sonnet bake-off, and whether she had been following the discussion and debate inspired by the trimeter sonnet. And yes, “Mower’s Song” is a sonnet, a compelling, religious work of art that proves how — through poetics — memory and imagination can, as Phillis Levin writes in her introduction to The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, “liberate the soul from bondage to the past, serving the function of redemption” (page lx).

Kim’s Facebook query elicited a few replies, the first being: “When it’s not a good 14 lines of rhyming iambic pentameter (appropriate substitutions permissible for iambs).” That person is entitled to his or her opinion, narrow though it may be. I replied: “When it doesn’t sing.”

In deciding on my personal favorites I also looked for whether or not the sonnet’s flow from start to finish, or, if you will, from “argument” to resolution was successfully and logically achieved. Without totally setting aside the more traditional aspects of meter, rhyme or placement of the volta, I asked myself how the lines performed in relation to one another, in what Levin calls their “choreography” (xxxviii), and whether the conflict or incongruity they portrayed led to a conclusion, an epiphany of sorts, or whether they ended on a note of ambiguity, an aspect I particularly admire. I also looked for striking, sensory images, a distinctive voice, and a feeling that I was present as a witness to, or even a participant in, the sonnet’s moment in time.

I had great difficulty in choosing three “top picks”. I reluctantly set aside “Childhood” and “The Baby and the Bathwater”, two sonnets with distinctive voices and remarkable movement. After re-reading the finalists many times over, I finally made my choices.

But before I list my top picks . . .

An aside about nostalgia and sentiment vs. sentimentality . . . I was going to write a rather lengthy explication of the words nostalgia, sentiment and sentimentality, for those (thankfully, few) who, based on the sonnets chosen as finalists, rather churlishly whined about being most horribly assailed by wistful sentimentality and dollops of treacly nostalgia; but after writing an entire page defending each sonnet against the charge of said bludgeoning and smothering, I decided there really was no need to justify any of the choices we made, and even less, to flog dead horses.

So, my top three, in REVERSE order are :

(THIRD PLACE) For Two Lindens Newly Planted on Avenue D
by Peter Spagnuolo

As a preface to my comments on this sonnet choice, I would like to refer readers to one of my favorites from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree:

Grow not too high, grow not too far from home,
Green tree, whose roots are in the granite's face!
Taller than silver spire or golden dome
A tree may grow above its earthy place,
And taller than a cloud, but not so tall
The root may not be mother to the stem,
Lifting rich plenty, though the rivers fall,
To the cold sunny leaves to nourish them.
Have done with blossoms for a time, be bare;
Split rock; plunge downward; take heroic soil, ---
Deeper than bones, no pasture for you there:
Deeper than water, deeper than gold and oil:
Earth's fiery core alone can feed the bough
That blooms between Orion and the Plough.

Like Millay’s poem, “For Two Lindens Newly Planted on Avenue D” is only ostensibly about trees. But even if it were, the fine craftsmanship alone — including not only its technical merits but also its vivid language rendered through metaphor, imaginative slant rhymes, muscular verbs and a distinctive voice in words charged with what Elaine Scarry calls “radiant ignition” — would have catapulted this poem into the top ten spots. Were it not for the word “morn” in line 14, it would have been my #2 pick. It’s a nit easily fixed, especially by such an excellent wordsmith.

This sonnet is a double dare on steroids. As I read the very first words, I was immediately reminded of the memorable scene in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz in which the Wicked Witch of the West skywrites “Surrender Dorothy” above the Emerald City. This image, along with the use of the words “box-cutter boys” brought to mind the haunting image of 9/11.

I love how the volta has to wait around until line 12 to occur, since I don’t consider the narrator’s finely-tuned, attitude-filled list of insult and injury to be in any way hyperbolic. All of the senses necessarily and skillfully come into play — the smell of piss, the lingering taste of cuchifrito grease, the cruel lacerations, the sound of crashing errant cars and backing-up beer trucks, the eyesore of deli bags in the branches. I am there on Avenue D.

It is the uncovering of deeper layers of meaning that raises Spagnuolo’s sonnet, like Millay’s, to a higher level of excellence and places it in my top three picks. Is this a poem about hope? Faith? Survival? Who or what do the linden trees represent – the “other”? Immigrants? Is it a tribute to my native New York City post-9/11? To the human spirit in general? To poetry? To formal poetry getting pissed on for so long?;) All of the above? None of the above? You fill in the blanks.

“For Two Lindens Newly Planted on Avenue D”, delves deeply into “Earth’s fiery core” — the heart — and leaves the reader root-root-rooting — pun intended — for the home team. ♫

(SECOND PLACE) Requited Love
by Matthew Buckley Smith

The repetition of the word “Here” in “Requited Love” not only shows, in a series of matter-of-fact, striking images, how life’s great expectations may, must and do change over time. In a way it’s a cautionary tale asking us to “hear” (and perhaps act on) its underlying message.

The painful irony of the title becomes increasingly apparent as one reads through the list — through finely observed sensory details — not only this particular couple’s slipping-down life, but also acts as a memento mori, immediately recognizable, though artfully disguised, as the “skulls” in line 12.

I greatly admire the craftsmanship required to write such an excellent “Wyatt/Surrey” sonnet, and how Smith uses the rima baciata (aka kissing rhyme) of the three quatrains to throw into sharp relief the spiritually and physically impoverished life the couple now leads.

Regardless of how one interprets the final five words of the poem (and I came up with at least five possibilities), in the end, every fear mentioned — from infidelity to mice — becomes insignificant when faced with the living death the couple now experiences: two lives now reduced to a shoulda-woulda-coulda, monotonous routine of silent eating, bathing and sleeping. The only thing this couple shares is the bed they made and now must lie in. Pun intended.

♫ ♫ A heartbreaker.

(FIRST PLACE) Last Dance
by Stephen T. Harvey

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows. ( -- Robert Frost, “The Secret Sits”)

“Last Dance” is a poem of exquisite beauty and subtlety, a finely-crafted work of art rendered with striking images, replete with “joy, passion and flow”, qualities which new Eratosphere member James Wright rightly states, to paraphrase him, are not often seen in a piece of writing. It concerns two main branches of philosophy: metaphysics and epistemology. It is also the only poem of the hundreds I read that gave me goose bumps each and every time I read it.

The cane is, of course, the secret that “sits in the middle” around which we all dance, an ingenious conceit handled expertly from start to finish. The epistemic paradox of memory weaves, as do the sonnet’s rhymes and two main protagonists, throughout the poem, culminating in the brilliant and haunting closing lines of the sestet.

Some people have a deep, existential concern about the nature of time and the scope of knowledge, while others but passing, theoretical interest. To those who groaned, growled or otherwise grumbled about what they saw as a surfeit of poems about ageing in this bake-off, I would point out that “Last Dance”, though it portrays a frail, 99-year-old man, is much more than that. The man is only one-half of the “counterbalance”. He is not

. . . a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless . . . . ( -- W.B. Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium,”)

but rather what comes after that word, “unless”. He and the toddler are souls singing “Of what is past, or passing, or to come.” If “Last Dance” is to be understood and appreciated on more than a superficial level by a jaded audience, it must be seen as addressing one of the central and largest subjects in philosophy: truth. The elderly man and the toddler are truth-bearers.

But that’s a huge topic for another time and another forum.

♫ ♫ ♫ Bravo, bravissimo!

Gratitudes

First, I would like to thank Gail White for being such a wonderful co-host/co-judge and for posting the finalist sonnets and my comments when, due to an urgent family situation (still very critical), I was unable to do so. We had some lively exchanges, both serious and fun-filled, and she knows I will now have to wean myself off jelly doughnuts, which at times I found myself ingesting as a source of energy to deal with the onslaught of entries :eek:.

I would also like to thank the hundreds of poets who entered a sonnet in the bake-off and Eratosphere members — old and new alike — who read and commented on the finalists. Some interesting and thought-provoking topics have arisen from these exchanges, and that’s a good thing. Who can tell what the sonnet will look like or sound like in another 500 years?

Last, but never least, I thank Alex Pepple for the honor of being asked to co-host and co-judge this year, for setting up the tag-team email address and his assistance with minor glitches throughout the process, for trying to deflect some of the slings and arrows, for his continued support of the annual Eratosphere sonnet bake-off, and for Eratosphere itself.

Catherine Chandler
July 23, 2013

Congratulations to the winners, runners up, and honorable mention. Just for the record, I did not guess any of the writers I thought I knew. It's good to see a mix of familiar and unfamiliar faces in the contest.

Thanks again to Alex, Cathy, and Gail. Well done.

Sean

Congrats to all the winners, finalists, and honorable mentions...especially to Matthew Buckley Smith for winning the popular vote by a landslide. It's kind of amazing how it wasn't even close. For the poets and critics here who often don't agree about much, it's a testament to the strength of "Requited Love" that it captured votes by a solid majority of participants.

I'm also heartened to see so many entrants who were not "regulars" at Eratosphere. Hopefully many will decide to stick around and contribute to the various forums. They can only get better.

Huge congratulations to all the winners, finalists and hon menshes. I'm surprised and delighted to be included in such distinguished company. And thanks again to the judges who have dealt with such record amounts of both entries and flak.

May I just add my thanks to Alex for setting this up, and to Cathy for doing heroic amounts of work during a stressful personal time. Had either of us been in sole charge, a couple of the finalists would have been different, but agreement was mutual on the final choices -- and I was encouraged by the number of people who thought, after all the teapot tempests were over, that this was one of the best bake-offs ever.

Once again, congratulations to the winners, and thanks to everyone who entered and commented.

Hell, I didn't even enter, yet I seem perhaps to have made off with at least a portion of the Most Churlish Award!

I'd hate to jeopardize that distinction by congratulating the winners, but I will anyway. Congratulations.

Nemo

When reading just for myself, I never hand out awards; but I enjoyed all these poems enough that I wish I could get a peek at the honorable mentions, too, and suspect I will someday. Congratulations to all the participants, and my thanks to the judges for a good time.

Best,

Ed

Lots of dear poets in here. Congratulations to the winners, finalists, and honorably mentioned. Thanks to Gail and Cathy for their work.

Pedro.

congrats to the winners. thanks for a well-run contest.

Nemo is correct to complain. I also take exception to the phrasing employed in the post "Cathy's Picks", where some posters, with whose viewpoints one judge disagreed, are described as persons...

who, based on the sonnets chosen as finalists, rather churlishly whined about being most horribly assailed by wistful sentimentality and dollops of treacly nostalgia (underline added)

The remark is both ad hominem and inaccurate. I read nobody as 'whining' nor do I recall any 'dollops of treacly' nostalgia being complained of. I, like Nemo to my recollection, did find some of the poems, in my case particularly "The Last Dance", overly sentimental and some of the other poems - not all the poems chosen as finalists - overly concerned with nostalgia. Those are still my opinions. Am I disallowed from holding them - or is doing so to be characterised as 'churlish' and 'whining'?

I'd also like to point out that my own selection included the winner which I placed second; that my choice for first place was also that of the other judge (and came fourth overall) and that my choice of third was also the third place choice of the other judge. My evaluations of order do not seem to be so far adrift - and I think it unfortunate that a judge's final report should have been used ex cathedra to denigrate the attitudes of site members whose views are not agreed with.

That judges have an extremely difficult task is clear and I, like everybody else, am suitably grateful that they give so much time and effort to it - and even more so where difficult personal circumstances have increased that burden. The bake-off is nothing without both them and all the entrants - but it is also nothing without the free expression of the critical views of the site's members, who, however, much they may disagree with views held by a judge, should be respected.

Lest this post be similarly characterised, may I add that what I started off with the intention of posting, before I had read "Cathy's Picks" in detail, was a suggestion that, either through the good offices of the site or on the initiative of the Hon. Menshs themselves, it would be extremely helpful if, out of so splendidly large a field, we might have sight of more of the sonnets - a potential doubling of our pleasure and of our chances for critical appraisal. Could that be done - jointly or severally? I hope it goes without need for further elabioration that I warmly congratulate all the poets selected and especially the winners.

Hey Nigel,

Those honorable mentions won't be posted, they never are, and for good reason: the whining would never stop. I've tired of the shit-shows that go on here for time to time - any measure taken to avoid another exhausting and pointless recrudesce is welcomed from this member.

I kept expecting to be able to participate substantially in these conversations, but I never really managed it for a number of (generally benign) reasons. Still, I enjoyed the poems and discussions very much, particularly when they focused on the poems (but the what's a sonnet stuff was ok too...). So I want to say a hearty thanks to host, judges, and poets. I hope that in retrospect it will appear to all that a little testiness is inevitable and, anyway, part of the fun!

Particular thanks for mentioning my poem honorably (it's in iambic tetrameter, by the way...). That's a nice compliment in such distinguished company.

Finally, I'll apologize here for any past and future weirdnesses I post because of the wildly enthusiastic autocorrect on my iPad. On Tim Murphy's thread here, I used the words "unrewardingly" and "trimeter," which were converted before I spotted the error to "unrewarding lay" and "trimester"... Sorry.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jesse Anger (Post 293657)

Now that's what, in the face of Nigel's well-reasoned and polite posting, I would call, to quote Catherine's ill-advised gibe, "churlish whining".

By the way, Jesse, are you under the impression that "for time to time" is a meaningful phrase, or that "recrudesce" exists as a noun?

On a more positive note, thank you for introducing me to the wonderfully poetic word "shit-shows".

Catherine, while I, like everyone else, appreciate and thank you for the enormous effort you've put into this, I must take exception to the following:

On July 21, Kim Bridgford posted the following question on Facebook: “When is a sonnet not a sonnet?” ... I replied: “When it doesn’t sing.”

That seems to me, to say the least, a touch disingenuous.

Congratulations & congratulations again!

First, congratulations to all the finalists, thank you to all the participants -- those who submitted, those who posted and commented variously, and all the insight and enthusiasm you brought to the event, especially, the sonnets themselves. In my humble estimation, this is our most successful sonnet bake-off event ever. I hope some of the new members who came to or discovered Eratosphere through the public announcements of the event outside the Sphere will stay awhile longer!

Mostly, congratulations to our 2013 Able Muse/Eratosphere Sonnet Bake-off winners Mathew Buckley Smith, Stephen T. Harvey, and Elise Hempel. I'll be contacting you privately with instructions for the publication of your sonnet in Able Muse, print edition.

Furthermore, there are two other sonnets that had much appeal for me--for their grittiness, audacity, for their effective, subject, setting, fresh and vivid imagery . . . amongst their many other admirable attributes. Thus, with some minor edits, they too have been accepted for publication in Able Muse. Yes, congratulations also go to Marly Youmans for "The Baby and the Bathwater," and Peter Spagnuolo for "For Two Lindens Newly Planted on Avenue D." Coincidentally, these two sonnets also achieved fourth and fifth place in the popular voting, making it possible for me to simply say that the event's top-five sonnets will be published in Able Muse.

Finally, about the request for posting the honorable mentions, that's never been done in past bake-off, and I'll like to keep it that way. We've had our vigorous discussions, pro or con, about various facets of this bake-off, especially, about the sonnets themselves, how or why they were selected, and so on. I think we've all come out of it unscathed, and learned a thing or two along the way. However, I don't believe we're ready for another round of the same--especially since I'm already seeing signs of the tempest in a teapot brewing again in this thread. So, please, no posting of the honorable mention sonnets by the judges or by the authors themselves.

Thank you everyone ... and until next year. And especially, thank you to our hosts and judges, Gail & Cathy for a splendid and most successful event!

Cheers,
...Alex

Yes Brian you're so right it's recrudescence , an obvious typo, don't be a douche. What I said is on point and I stand by it. Nothing churlish about it. Imagine the annoyance of having the not chosen posted on the heels of the bake-off! I bet yours would be the first and foremost voice in the sour grape choir. Put that in your pipe.

I'm out.

I want to thank Gail, Catherine, and Alex and say that I was honored and surprised to find that I was one of the ten finalists when I came back from a week at our family cabins in northern Wisconsin (no computer or internet access). I also want to thank everyone who commented on my slightly unconventional sonnet (I often end up mixing different types of sonnets to find the heart of the poem). Some interesting comments! Thought I'd clear up that there's no (intended) symbolism to the snake; I had no fear of snakes as a kid and used to "play" with them. Once, I took home a dead one and couldn't understand why my mother was so freaked out....

I must admit, I found the contest to be a little confusing, but then again it was my first bake-off. And this is a tough crowd! I do feel a bit emotionally exhausted; time to jump the fence and get back into that field!

Cathy and Gail,
thank you for all your work. Thanks Alex for making it possible, and
all your work in general.

Congratulations to all the winners, to the finalists, and to the honorable mentions.

Martin

Congratulations to the winners and honorable mentions, and again, thanks to Cathy, Gail, and Alex.

As always, the bakeoff was an education.

jlk

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jesse Anger (Post 293657)

Those honorable mentions won't be posted, they never are, and for good reason: the whining would never stop.

Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, Jesse, but this sentence seems to suggest the whining on the Sphere (1) has stopped at one point or another; (2) might stop under favorable circumstances; (3) will stop at some future date (at least if the honorable mentions aren't posted); or (4) some combination of the above. You, sir, are an optimist of the first water. Damn fine poet, too.

Best,

Ed

One more tip of my hat to Robert Crawford--this time by name. Great work.

Congratulations to the winners, finalists, and honorable mentions. And thank you to Alex, Catherine, and Gail for what must have been a lot of labor!

The bake-off was a great instruction manual for and introduction to Eratosphere. I joined a year or so ago and couldn't make heads or tails out it (I am completely technophobic).

And my goodness, the comments had me wincing, reflecting and howling with laughter several times a day. What fun!

Warmest congratulations to the winners, and deep appreciations to the judges.

Congratulations to all the honourable mentions, finalists, and winners. I thought the overall quality of this year's finalists to be very high.

As always, it's a bit of a surprise to have the authors revealed. I wouldn't have guessed any of them except for Tim.

Alex,
What would be wrong with people who entered their work in the Bake-off, posting it in Met and noting that that was their entry? I think it would engender lively discussion.

Charlie - my objection is to posting them on the Distinguished Guest forum. There's no restriction to those who want to workshop their bake-off sonnet in any of the workshop forums (Met, Deep End, Non-Met, D&A, Translation). Of course, you'd probably want to post, in this case, in Met or Deep End.

...Alex

Congratulations to the winners, finalists, and honorable mentions! Thanks to the judges, and to Alex for hosting. I understand about the decision not to post the honorable mentions, but maybe if we're lucky, some will be voluntarily posted on the crit boards.

Nemo, I will armwrestle you for that "most churlish" award.

Dear Eratosphereans,

As a poet and writer who lives in an out-of-the-way place, I have appreciated being part of an e-community poetry event. And I enjoyed (despite the occasional ouch!) navigating the chaos of contradictory opinions. Thanks to the commenters, readers, and judges. Last of all, thanks to the people who made requests to print and reprint--a pleasant and unexpected surprise.

Good cheer, and good writing and reading to you--
Marly

Congratulations to the winners and a thank you to those who made the a Bake-off possible. I also thank all of those who commented on the sonnets. An education indeed!

Doris

Congratulations to the winners and everyone involved in conducting the contest. It was interesting and a lot of fun.

Another round of thanks and applause for Cathy and Gail, and congrats to all the winners and finalists. Oh, and the honorable mentions. It was a surprise and honor to find myself among them.

Siham

Yes indeed, thank you Catherine and Gail for putting up a great collection of sonnets that prompted real debate and lively discussion. I only wish I'd had more time to participate in the proceedings.

norm ball

Sonnet bake-off winners

Thanks to Alex, patient and generous host, and to Cathy and Gail for their excellent choices and comments! And of course congratulations to the winners and HMs, and to all who participated.

Rhina