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Contests : Wergle Flomp Free Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2011 : Judge's Comments
Thanks to everyone who entered our 2011 Wergle Flomp Poetry Contest. Entries this year topped out around 2,300. My optometrist thanks you, as well.
What am I looking for (besides a dark room to lie down in) as the sole, all-powerful judge of the Internet's most lucrative humor poetry contest? Poems that are intended to be humorous, for one thing. Please, please read the rules. And don't send me weird file format attachments: .mht? .bwd? WTF? It bruises my feminist ego to ask Adam for tech support.
The road to Wergle Flomp stardom, however, must be paved with more than good intentions. Here are some more themes that I don't find as funny as you did. You will benefit from reading this list. Trust me. I only want what is best for you.
Hallmark Humor:
I see too many poems based on a gag that I've read in a hundred "funny" greeting cards. Old folks lamenting their loss of attractiveness. Women who crave chocolate and become raving bitches once a month. True, some winners have touched on these themes, but they're not fresh enough to be the main source of comedy in the poem.
Been There, Done That:
No more drunk Santas. No more "Raven" or "Prufrock" parodies. We received some good poems that I reluctantly kept at semi-finalist status because they were retreads of ideas that past winners had already thoroughly explored with rubber gloves and a speculum.
Politically Incorrect:
Don't use "gay" as a slur. Don't use "whore" at all. No matter how much you need the rhyme.
When You (Don't) Care Enough to Send the Very Best:
Light verse needn't mean lightweight. If it took you 15 seconds to write this poem, I probably won't spend more time on it, either. Humor poetry is a delicate blend of timing, cultural relevance, and linguistic agility, with bass notes of absurdity and finished off with an aroma of antisocial tendencies. Getting this balance right may require even more effort than a serious poem.
OUR WINNERS
Perhaps a first for the Wergle Flomp contest, all three of our top winners were relatively clean. (Their poems, that is; I can't speak for them personally.) Though I cherish our tradition of violating community standards, there was really no doubt that John M. Harris Jr.'s "The Flight Line Commedia" was worthy of first-place honors. This homage to Dante's Inferno takes us on a witty and instructive journey through the modern-day hell of air travel, where rude patrons and penny-pinching executives alike receive their perfect come-uppance. Harris sustains the difficult rhyme-scheme of terza rima in natural, contemporary language over the entire course of this epic.
Proof that everything goes better with zombies, second-prize winner Charles Doyle's "T'was the Week After Doomsday" kept me laughing with a fresh—okay, raw—take on a classic Christmas poem. This much-parodied work by Clement C. Moore was a candidate for my "retired" list. Why did Doyle's version stand out? Paradoxically, because he stayed so close to the original, in terms of phrasing and formal regularity, but changed the resonance of every image from charming to grotesque. The manic glee of this poem was infectious as a cannibal's bite. I should get that looked at, shouldn't I?
Alicia Ruskin's third-prize poem "Speaking of Speaking" was full of subtle, flarfy goodness. Here's an example of a humor poem in which timing is everything. Saturated with conference speeches, business meetings, status updates, newsfeeds and the like, we are accustomed to tuning out so much of what we hear, that we may not notice when an expected cliche takes a surreal or sinister turn. After a couple of these not-quite-right sentences, though, suddenly we begin paying attention and realize just how strange our collective consciousness has become, how elusive the logical connections between our beliefs.
Our honorable mentions included standout parodies of Robert Browning, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edward Lear, the rock group Queen, and the ubiquitous Edgar Allen Poe. Another Wergle Flomp favorite, Robert Frost, was mocked in a truly definitive way. These writers also tackled important topics such as Sauron's presidential candidacy and how to form a meaningful relationship with an eggplant.
My wishlist for the 2012 contest: More parodies of works we haven't yet seen in this contest, particularly contemporary ones. Reach beyond the Victorian and early Modernist poets we all studied in high school. More poems that use satire to make an original and socially relevant point. More butt sex.
Well...one out of three ain't bad.
Jendi Reiter
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