2000
HAIKU (Judge: Laurie W. Stoelting)
First Place ($100)
wildfire
the thermometer climbs
all night
Carolyn Hall (San Francisco CA)
Second Place ($50)
morning rain—
an egg for my father
spreads in the skillet
Timothy Russell (Toronto OH)
Third Place ($25)
pear slice falling
to the kitchen floor
pale moonlight
paul m. (San Francisco CA)
Honorable Mentions (unranked)
snapdragons—
hearing the sound of
mother’s sandals
joan iversen goswell (Valencia PA)
childhood home
my concrete footprints
go nowhere
Ernest J. Berry (Picton, New Zealand)
cloudless sky
she cranks up
the big white umbrellas
Carolyn Hall (San Francisco CA)
SENRYU (Judge: Paul O. Williams)
First Place ($100)
open-air T’ai Chi –
the occasional clearing
of a raven’s throat
D. Claire Gallagher (Sunnyvale CA)
Honorable Mentions (unranked)
second heart attack
he’s careful now
hiding the polish sausage
Kay F. Anderson (Redwood City CA)
moving day
again, I pack the china
we never use
Geri Barton (Levittown NY)
nude beach—
the crowd around
the dead whale
Michael Dylan Welch (Foster City CA)
TANKA (Judge: Ebba Story)
First Place
alone with no moon
water-doused embers out
eyes closed . . . I drift . . .
in the dark within the dark
I see your bright face smiling
David Rice (Berkeley CA)
Honorable Mentions (unranked)
floating moon
all night your radiance
blinded me & yet at dawn
how crystalline the dew
on the chrysanthemums
Pamela A. Babusci (Rochester NY)
they say it has
as many seeds
as a human
has bones—
the shattered pomegranate
Veronica Johnston (San Francisco CA)
whirlwinds of wisteria
scattered
among last fall’s leaves . . .
my daughter’s friends share a joke
I don’t understand
Linda Jeanette Ward (Coinjock NC)
RENGAY (Judges: Paul Watsky and Garry Gay)
First Place
Cornstalk Twisting
Memorial Day--
rows of gravestone flags waving
out of rhythm
dusty field
cornstalk leaves twisting
sailboat
on the billboard
peeled off by the wind
collection day
a bag drifting
over the campus chapel
fan on high
the professor's papers scatter
the neighbor's house
shingles strewn
where it used to be
Michael Dylan Welch
Lenard D. Moore
Second Place
Grandma's Kitchen
undulating top
of the chopping block
grandma's kitchen
both children lick batter
from the mixer blades
keeping the peace--
in the pantry a cache
of wishbones
groceries unpacked
the tabby rustles his way
into each bag
she sweeps the crumbs out
onto the welcome mat
suds-filled sink
through parted curtains
a sparrow song
Carolyn Hall
Ebba Story
Third Place
Out of Eden
the greenhouse cluttered
with broken flower pots
long winter rain
this old watering can
missing its rose
rows of nibbled tops
young Peter Rabbit
has helped himself
a weathercock's screech--
dandelion fluff swirls
in every direction
pulling on some Wellies
the gardener throws her back out
window view . . .
in the rusted wheelbarrow below
white chickens nesting
Lynne Leach
Helen K. Davie
Judges' Comments:
It was a pleasure judging this contest. We received twenty-one entries, and found them generally engaging and interesting. In choosing the winners we looked for a persuasive, well-sustained theme, distinctive voices, and language that was visually and emotionally evocative.
The first place poem, "Cornstalk Twisting," not only presents a well-varied set of images of the wind as a disordering force, but frames it with a consistent, well-rendered sense of place--a midwestern college town with its campus chapel, cornstalks, and tornadoes. The four relatively benign central links are bracketed by a first link featuring "gravestone flags" and a final link centered on the shingles of a destroyed house. The proportions of the poem are excellent and its brooding power well suits the subject.
In second place, "Grandma's Kitchen" lovingly illuminates the spatial universe within a single room. The images, while only directly referring to Grandma's person or agency twice, all cooperate to generate the aura of a warm-hearted, permissive, and perhaps somewhat ditsy matron, "sweep[ing] the crumbs out/ onto the welcome mat." The poem's language is both precise and graceful, with each link well realized.
"Out of Eden," the third place winner, has an ambitious, complex theme: gardening in a postlapsarian world. As with the other poems selected, its well-crafted imagery and elegant use of language hold the reader within a compelling frame. We can feel how the love of gardening must sustain itself despite setbacks and frustrations of all sorts--broken flowerpots, foraging rabbits, bad backs. Though not all of us share the physical hardships of the fully committed gardener, I imagine none of us, as writers, feel we reside permanently in Eden either.
Paul Watsky
Garry Gay
December 2000