AW Winter Time Poetry Contest

... I resorted to the inny, minny, miny, moe method of selection.

Kidding ;-)

Deciding is always difficult. Sure there's style, punctuation, word usage, and someone suggested reading them aloud - which speaks directly to the tonal quality even though the 'sounded out' poem is a more 'recent' concern. Sometimes when I go to read them out loud I still hear them in my head as if read in a dim coffee shop in that same rhythmic loud whisper of most performances.

Then there is the meaning, the moment in time the poet has attempted to capture. All of this I think leads to the individuals perception of what is good or not so good as a poem.

I add to all this one more thing, I look for the twisting simile, the meaning of the meaning not said so much as implied. Those are the ones that I always end up liking more, even if I can't quite explain it at the time. And there is time, too, of course, meaning that what I read yesterday afternoon might not hold up so well this morning...

Any way you look at it, it's never easy, and oddly, the more of them you read, the harder it becomes =)

-Kelly

Without a deadline, I could have never decided... Editors must be the offspring of superheros...

Cheers, Bob