Event
IV Awards for
The
Tipsy Muse Poetry Contest
Winter
2001
The
topic
And the envelope
please...
The winners'
circle
The current
Tipsy Muse Poetry Contest guidelines
The
Topic
Topic #4:
A misguided love sonnet.
And
the envelope please...
— Here'
the award speech from Topic #4 Judge, A. M.
Juster:
I
know judges are expected to say how strong the
competition was, but I truly enjoyed reading
all—well, almost all—of these, and I convulsed
in laughter at many that I will not even mention
here. Thank you, Alex, for this opportunity.
My
winner is the very last entry—"Setting
The Record Straight" (perhaps a lesson
to us all to keep editing until the very last
moment!). I had hoped for clever takes on the
open-textured "misguided", and this
fine poem lived up to that expectation. The
opening quatrain faithfully captures our crude
everyday language in a way that poetry usually
avoids, and then oh so lightly despairs about
it with the droll "Quote. Unquote."
that concludes the quatrain. The following lines
play with the cliches of love in an amusing
though not raucous way that lulls the reader
into complacency and sets up the splendid punchline—a
punchline that somehow evokes the sweet blindness
of Shakespeare's genderbending comedies. (pause
for applause)
The
honorable mention cut was extremely tough, and
with great reluctance I cut the two fine parodies—"When
you are old" and "My Mistress' Size"
(with its clever title and wonderfully whacky
off-rhymes). I have lingering doubt about having
made the right choice, if that makes the two
affected poets feel any better.
All
three honorable mentions are terrific poems.
"Beauty and the Beast" uses the premise
cleverly and yet to a purpose. Its language
is fresh, and the command of meter was top-notch.
The humorous yet haunting conclusion guaranteed
recognition here.
"Ladies,
Never Love A Campin' Man" overcame my sense
of dread when I first read the title, and skillfully
lampooned a common type that somehow managed
to avoid lampooning until now. I particularly
liked the rumpus/compass and prompt/swamped
rhymes, and the multiple levels of play in "backseat
hike".
Finally,
the brave author of "Pasiphae to her friend
Daedalus" took on my well-known bias that
no one except the great Alicia Stallings should
be writing poems about classical mythology.
Again, there were some inspired rhymes (grunts/once;
wheeled again/field again; upon us/Adonis),
and the only blemish was that the magnificent
couplet at the end of the octet somehat overshadowed
the closing couplet.
Admirable, and highly publishable, work all
around!!!
Mike
The
Winners' Circle
The Grand Prize Winner ($100.00)
"nyctom"
Grand Prize
Setting
The Record Straight
— By "nyctom"
Dear
Jo: That poem I wrote, the one I slipped
under your door…you wrote me back a note
and said that I was full of shit. You ripped
it up and said I sucked. Quote. Unquote.
My
meaning you misunderstood. But I
must set the record straight. It’s love I’m
in—
I’ve all the normal symptoms: I ache and sigh
and can’t sleep nights. I’m even growing thin
(well
that’s not bad). It seems that love is like
the flu—but
better. Hey, I’m just a guy
in love. And we never covered Love in Psych.
Who knew how fast it all could go awry?
My
poem was true. I'll never love another...
But you should know—I
wrote it for your brother.
Honorable
Mention
Beauty
and the Beast
— By Gail White
I
disliked children even as a child—
those vexing, nattering, excluding things.
Animals, on the other hand, were mild
and tractable. I loved the tapered wings
of birds, the softness of the household cat,
the slender flanks and melting eyes of deer.
Animals need our tenderness. And that
is why imprisonment is pleasant here,
where the rough beast attends my every need
and only asked to see me twice a day.
I brush his coat and warm his bed and feed
him chocolate drops, and I'm content to stay.
He's kindly natured, though his face is grim.
He won't risk children who might look like him.
Click
here
to visit Gail White's start page.
Honorable
Mention
Ladies,
Never Love A Campin' Man
— By "Rachel"
The
moment that I saw him pitch his tent
I knew he'd be my Sherpa; but his compass
had bumped its needle loose, I found. He meant
to take me to the highest mount for rumpus
atop the Rockies, but he headed south
instead of north northeast and got us swamped.
He told me if I'd only shut my mouth
and quit my backseat hike, he'd find a prompt
escape. Yeah right. The guy was so confused
he fell into the loo he thought he dug
ten miles ago. To drag him out, I used
my grapplehook to nab the stupid lug.
Ticked off, he took off through a maze of trees
and left me here, alone, with Lyme disease.
Honorable
Mention
Pasiphaë to her friend Daedalus
(Inventor of the Cow Suit)
— By Christopher
Wagner
Fresh
from the sea, his muscles hard and glistening,
He seemed the perfect man: so beautiful,
So masculine--and yet adept at listening…
When you said, “Dear, he’s just a big, white
bull,”
I thought “he’ll open up in time”—-and grunts
Were all the dialogue I longed for, once.
So I played Hathor. (I adored the leather,
But that’s no basis for a life together.)
We’ve
called it off, but madness comes upon us:
I find my suit is on. I’m being wheeled again
(Feeling a fool) to wait upon that field again.
But then, I catch a whiff of my Adonis.
Hide becomes gooseflesh! Lost to shame, I moo!
(Oh Daedalus! why couldn’t I love you?)
Click
here
to visit Christopher Wagner's start page.
The Tipsy Muse Hall of Light 