Trump poetry contest at NY Times
 

The New York Times put out a call for poems about Donald Trump. Here's the link. Just passing this along in case it's of interest, e.g. to D&A folks.

Nausheen

How does one enter?
As a comment?

Dump the Trump!
 

I see this morning that Andrew Frisardi, Susan McLean and I have anti-Trump verses up at the New York Times contest. I checked yesterday and today; there may be others by our gang.

Mine's up now. HERE.


old turks


perks
quirks
smirks
irks

jerks

I have seen the poems of Andrew, Catherine, Ralph, and J.D. Smith, but there are so many hundreds of poems posted on the site that I don't have time to read them all (and I have to confess that many of them do not repay reading, especially those in rhyme and meter by people who don't know how to use rhyme and meter). A free-for-all like this can be a public service, a sort of therapeutic venting session, but it is not the place to find good satiric verse. I suspect that its purpose is mainly to lure in new subscribers to the newspaper.

Susan

I - eventually - found mine, but it was a somewhat mind-numbing search. Not only such a torrent of poor poetry, but such an avalanche of repetition and multiple submission. If the NYT did it for circulation, they - or at least some unfortunate sub-ed. - is certainly going to pay in literary agony for any advantage gained. It will be interesting to see if any 'story/feature' ever emerges from this. I suspect not.

I just posted a few, though I don't know how long it will take for them to be approved (assuming they will be).

no reflection on the fine sphereans who have submitted but I do believe Susan sees it clearly as self-casting click-bait

Yeah, I came up with two rhyming lines driving to work and posted them. Then quickly wished I had spent some time revising, revising, revising.

Nonetheless, it seems like good fun, and no one is required to buy a subscription. However, if we all start finding our email inboxes filled with solicitations, then we will know what this was all about.

I would like to take Kristof at his word: he's done this before, as he states in his piece. Maybe he wants to see what his readers are thinking. After all, only those who post a comment are reading them, I'll bet.

I feel sorry for the intern reading and posting all of them, if that is what's happening. Of course, I would imagine that the NYT has the money to buy software that searches for key no-no words and then publishes acceptable poems. My submission took twelve hours to show up.

For me, I'm still revising my epigram. I may have something for a long-eared website I know.

Cheers,
Greg

11/9
=
9/11
=
911

I tried to enter this but it took so long I lost the will to live.

Donald Trump, Donald Trump, he’s our President.
Donald Trump, Donald Trump, God knows what he meant.
He’s on the trail, and bound to fail.
Mugwump Trump, lardy lump, he’s a chump.

They have a list of something like 160 reader favorites. Susan has at least one on that list and I have a couple as well. But one or two others that I entered have not appeared even on the long list (even though I receive emails telling me they'd been approved).

Roger, given the hundreds of poems that they were posting at a time, I suspect that yours were all posted, but lost in the avalanche. I posted two, and one of them I barely saw before it sank way to the bottom of the new postings. I saw three of yours on the readers' picks.

Susan

I had some good news and bad news just now. I got an email from Kristoff's assistant saying that they want to use one of my poems in his column this Thursday. The bad news is that they wanted me to confirm that it had never been published before (a stipulation I don't recall them making when they announced the contest) and I am unable to do so since the one they picked was in The Spectator in March 2016.

Why on earth do they care? If some readers take offense at the winners of the NYT Trump poetry contest, I'm pretty sure it won't be because they've seen one of the entries in print elsewhere.

Well, maybe they won't care after all. I'll have to wait to see the column to find out.

I heard that they are considering one of my poems for the Thursday issue, too. Mine wasn't previously published, if that is a problem.

Susan

That's great, Susan. I'm sure they wouldn't bother contacting you if they weren't fully intended to use your poem. Since you don't have a prior publication problem like I do, I'd be surprised not to find you in the NY Times tomorrow.

Woohoo! Susan gets the last word: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/o...erse.html?_r=0

Elegant and very much to the point. Congratulations, Susan.

Well done, Susan!

Congrats, Susan. Thanks for sticking up for Arts and Education!

Cheers,
Greg

PS I am now receiving those damn phishing emails from NYT! ARRRGH!