WD Poetic Form Challenge: Strambotto Winner
The Writer’s Digest Poetic Form Challenge (this time a strambotto) is an opportunity for poets to try a form together and for one of those poems to end up in Writer’s Digest magazine.
The Writer’s Digest Poetic Form Challenge (this time a strambotto) is an opportunity for poets to try a form together and for one of those poems to end up in Writer’s Digest magazine.
Here are the results of the Writer’s Digest Poetic Form Challenge for the strambotto along with a Top 10 list.
Here is the winning strambotto:
Chant des morts, by Daniel Ari
It's hard to smoke a cigarette without lips.
Too bad, because it's cold and crowded down here,
and a smoke with a joke enlivens the crypts—
above all when all the tourists disappear—
but we've found we don't need flesh to shake our hips
and tamp our femurs on the underworld sphere.
A broken pelvis shakes, a cracking skull flips,
a mound of phalanges clatters from a bier
to tap an echoing gavotte in the mine.
We echo forever in the twisting run
around Latin words left for you as a sign:
you may be one of the few who joins our fun;
or else you'll be elsewhere in your long recline.
It's all one underground, after all, and un-
derstandable to feel our song in your spine
far below Paris, so far below the sun.
*****
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*****
Congratulations, Daniel! I really enjoyed the playfulness of "Chant des morts," both in the subject matter and language. It's not often I get to read a poem with phalanges, a bier, and an "echoing gavotte."
Here’s my Top 10 list:
- Chant des morts, by Daniel Ari
- View of Flowers Under Moonlight, by Sara McNulty
- On Seeing a Grandchild, by William Preston
- Strambotto Amore, by Sari Grandstaff
- Reach, by Richard Walker
- No Colossus, by Tracy Davidson
- Garden Yin and Yang, by Candace Kubinec
- Rendezvous, by Jane Shlensky
- Family Pet, by RJ Clarken
- Inspiration, by Alice Stainer
Congratulations to everyone in the Top 10! And to everyone who wrote a strambotto!
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
