------Results of the 2021 Robert Frost Poetry Contest!----------
As posted at : https://robertfrostcontest.blogspot.com/
BTW, got great metrical poetry? Quick, before March ends...
the Frost Farm contest: http://www.frostfarmpoetry.org/prize
(text of poems comes after this)1st place, with 45.29
John Blair of San Marcos, Texas
"In The Tin Factory"
finalist, w/43.9
John Davis Jr. of Riverview, Florida
"Bound Furniture"
finalist, w/43.0
Linda Flaherty Haltmaier of Beverly, Massachusetts
"Museum....."
finalist, w/42.5
----(wbr)
finalist, w/41.25
Jessica Cross of Lawrence, Massachusetts
"Noise (sestina)"
*The scores (sum, 5 readers, 2nd round, scored 0-10 each)
are posted to illustrate how great and close great poems are,
and how variable the reactions are. By combining a number of readers,
the question, "is this special to many, will it make a strong impression on a crowd?"
is at least partially answered.
Within and beyond this list, most of the poems we received
were very satisfying to read, and all were worth learning from.
Learning what? Actually, the great and subtle art of
dipping an oar into other souls and stirring them.
Art is not just 'what this is', but 'what it does to me'.
Thanks to all
who sent their innermost in!
--The Frost Board
-------------------------------------poem texts-----------------------
IN THE TIN FACTORY
---by J.Blair
There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic
age, a human being was crushed by books—John Hersey, Hiroshima
The books themselves are rubble abandoned
shrines of moments rumors and misrule shouting
through doorways bright as salt Miss Sasaki
sits at her desk her body held in a calm pretense
of dutiful of useful waiting the way
cherry blossoms wait forever in a kimono’s print
to wither (after the bomb some of the women
of Hiroshima would wear flowers until they
themselves withered perfect blooms burned
into their skin by a light so bright it heated
the dark patterns on their kimonos like the metal
of a branding iron) & the shelves in their rigid orders
are made of heavy oak & painted white (color
of industry color of empty color of death
color of the serpent-god Hakuja no Myojin
who in the book of folktales above Miss Sasaki’s head
perpetually strangles rogue samurai in their sleep)
and the color makes Miss Sasaki remember
the novel she has been reading about the snowy
north country a young geisha lost in her poverty
the handsome traveler who loves her and leaves
her inevitably behind how the afternoon moon
paints itself like ardor above unbroken fields of pale
buckwheat flowers as the traveler in his train alone
homeward goes every horizon and rail every
line tracing every edge a separation of here
from there of the past from whatever consummation
still hovers on the other side of now; it is 8:14
she is looking at the window in a minute
she will look away thinking to speak to the girl
at the next desk about something she can never
afterwards remember but before that in
the moments before after begins she sees through
the tall panes absolutely nothing not even
sky or rooftops or any kind of cloud only
a featureless waiting-to-be that fills her not with dread
but with longing what do you call the world?
a priest at the hydrangea temple of Ajisai-dera
once asked her father and her father replied
without hesitation I am the world I name
the world myself and now she thinks this light
is the name of the world before it is written
and the window is its book like pages too bright
for words this day like any other day like any
other story relentless & forever about to begin.
-------------------------------------
Bound Furniture
----by J.Davis
Simple tying commenced:
end over end, close the loop
until the hole is gone, until
a fat, hard lump of line is left
where space and braided length once were.
Secure everything. Heirlooms
shift as road vibration trembles
through finished wooden legs,
weakening joints
with every exit curve.
Our cargo holds like boats
moored to the floating dock
of this moving truck. Ropes
tumored by stopper knots
limit sway and slide.
The doctors said it would be best
to live closer to the hospital,
easing my transport and travel
preceding the inevitable last
visit: loved ones, declarations.
Don’t leave me here to do
the living you plead in that same
spousal tone that asks me
to take out the trash, reminds me
to pick up milk and eggs for you.
We’ll arrive soon and loosen
these everyday fixtures, untie
our landmarks of rest, and begin
filling open floors and bare walls
with familiar items – kept, freed.
----------------------------------------------
Museum..... (text witheld)
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Noise (sestina)
----by Jessica Cross
You wonder if you've ever experienced silence. At night, you hear the trees,
Clawing desperately for purchase at your window; in the space
Between your walls, you can hear the house slowly crumble,
The termites gnawing at the beams to satisfy insatiable hunger.
You can hear, unsettlingly, the pulse of your heart, its echo
Reverberating in your ears, and you wonder, when your father leaves
(and it is a when, not an if like she'd like to pretend), when he leaves,
If she will still lie awake, imagining the shadows of the moon through the trees
To be his sillohuette; if every creak of the floorboards will still be the echo
Of his footfalls. Sometimes you imagine you are in the vacuum of space,
In a vortex of perfect silence, away from his anger, his hunger
For something more, for some illusion that always seems to crumble
Beneath the weight of his expectations. You've seen your mother crumble,
Sworn you've heard her heart break, a sound like dry leaves
Crushed beneath a careless heel. In the mornings, devoid of hunger,
You'd push your eggs around your plate, the birds in the trees
Competing with your mother's humming; she sings to fill the space
Between them, the screech of his fork across the plate an empty echo
In lieu of conversation. In the kichenette, her song echoes;
Every every utensil reverberates, alive with her singing, threatening to crumble
With the sad desperation of it. She asks, does he have space
For one more, just one more cup of coffee, and follows him to the door as he leaves
Without a kiss, without even a proper goodbye. Only the trees
Wave to her as he drives away, leaving her with an emptiness worse than hunger.
There is a bitterness in your throat, a ringing in your ears, a consuming hunger
In your belly that aches, the way you know his does. You are his echo,
Daddy's little girl, and you understand the itch beneath his nails, like the trees
Scraping against the glass of your window; in your dreams, you see your life crumble
Into nothingness, into mundanity, into the emptiness you see in her eyes, and when he leaves,
You will not blame him. You will step aside, and watch as the space
Between you grows irreparably far. You are Daddy's little girl, and his space
In your heart cannot be filled, nor can the gaping hole in hers. The hunger
Will always be there, threatening to consume you; it will never be satisfied, never leave,
And neither will you. In the empty chambers of your heart, your mother's voice echoes
In the void he is destined to leave - I love you, I love you. The clouds crumble
At the touch of your finger as you reach desperately higher, like the trees.
In your dreams, you are a tree, and your mother collects your falling leaves
as they crack and crumble in her hands. The dream echoes in the space in your heart
He left behind -- you love her, you still hunger, but you have grown roots.
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