How we judge poems submitted to our contests.

By Dr. Len Roberts, Educational Director

Great Poetry, like all great art, possesses an intangible, magical ingredient that cannot be easily defined or duplicated since it’s the result of the poet’s unique and original creativity.

However, while professional poets and scholars agree that true greatness is impossible to define, they also believe that great poems do share many essential basic elements. Below we have listed the basic elements of good poetry, and we have provided you with actual examples of how previous winners of our poetry contests (along with Pulitzer prize winner W.D. Snodgrass) have mixed these elements with their own creativity to achieve the elusive quality of greatness.

We hope these guidelines will help you understand what our judges will be looking for in the poem you submit to our contest - and will also assist you in producing a lifetime of satisfying and fulfilling poetry!

The Six Basic Elements of a Poem

  1. Images & Discourse
    1. The Images in your poem should be unique and provide the reader with vivid sensory detail, as exemplified by Sophie Leu’s description of a breakfast in her poem, "Spring Love":
      • The black smoke rises from the pan....
        Scrambled eggs with thousand island dressing
        and over-baked tortillas from the grocery.
    2. The Discourse of your poem should avoid cliché expressions by presenting original phrasing, as demonstrated by Jessica Anthony in her poem, "A Recipe for an Episcopalian":
      • I remember his Sunday sermons,
        Severe for a man who took such care
        With the leaves of tomatoes.
  2. Rhythm
    1. Fixed meter should follow standard rules of prosody and should not sound mechanical. That is, metrical poems should maintain their structure of stressed/unstressed syllables without making the language seem wooden or monotonous. Pulitzer Prize winner, W.D. Snodgrass does this well in the following two lines of his famous poem, "April Inventory":
      • The gréen catálpa trée has túrned
        All whíte; the chérry blóoms once móre.
    2. Free rhythm should have a distinct beat or current of sound. A poem written in free rhythm should not merely be prose chopped into shorter lines. Jeff Curtis uses free rhythm well in "Grandpa Died":
      • He left me with his catfishing and his care of tools
        and a set of deer antlers on the wall
        but he forgot to take his glass of wine and ginger ale
        and his big hands around mine...
      (Note how Jeff’s first and third lines flow out, long and leisurely, so the reader gets a sense of expansion, and then notice how he shortens lines two and four.)
  3. Line Breaks
    1. Enjambment occurs when a line carries over from the preceding line. Enjambed lines should create suspense and movement, so the poem moves swiftly. Jacquelyn Z de Bray, in her poem, "Leda and the Swan," uses enjambment well:
      • Then the god is gone.
        Later what she remember is
        A certain way of clasping
        A shivering across the back that stings.
    2. End-Stop occurs when meaning and rhythm pause at the end of the line. Effective end-stopped lines will have strong end-words (in both meaning and music); they will also make the reader pause long enough to consider the line. Jacquelyn also uses end-stop effectively in the first line of her stanza referred to above: "Then the god is gone". The pause makes the reader stop to consider this new absence.
  4. Figures of Speech.
    1. Similes and metaphors need to avoid stock or cliché comparisons, such as "my love is like a rose". The comparisons should be unique and original, helping the reader to make new connections between the compared terms. W.D. Snodgrass creates a strong, unique simile in his poem, "Seeing You Have..." where he compares a woman to prairie grass:
      • She’s like the tall grass, common,
        That sends roots, where it needs,
        Six feet into the prairies.
      Maurice Gaerlan, in his poem, "Immigrant Smoking in the USA," uses a strong metaphor in stanza three of his poem to compare cigarettes to "burning pencils":
      • Besides me, three fellow countrymen speak
        Also with burning pencils between their fingers...
  5. Word Music
    1. Direct rhyme should not be forced; the language should flow naturally, as in regular speech. The rhyme word should not be there just because it rhymes, but because it is the best word for the poem’s sense as well as its sound. The following four lines from W. D. Snodgrass’s poem, "April Inventory", demonstrate this:
      • The green catalpa tree has turned
        All white; the cherry blooms once more.
        In one whole year I haven’t learned
        A blessed thing they pay you for.
    2. Indirect rhyme creates a subtle echo of sound that is also called half-rhyme or slant rhyme. Jeff Curtis uses indirect rhyme (consonance) well by repeating the "t" sound in these two lines of "Grandpa Died":
      • ...and he forgot to take the smell of his jacket
        and the sound of my name, the way he said it.
    3. Within the lines is created by use of assonance and consonance. Strong poems will "ring" with such internal music. Assonance occurs in this line of Elma Photikarmbumrung’s poem, "The River Kwai of Thailand":
      • Until the river becomes a bed of precious gems.
      Jessica Anthony uses consonance (the repetition of the "s" sound) to create this musical echo in the fourth stanza of her poem, "A Recipe for an Episcopalian":
      • I remember his Sunday sermons,
        Severe for a man who took such care
        With the leaves of his tomatoes.
  6. Formal Structures
    1. Formal structures. If a poet submits a formal poem such as a sonnet, sestina, or villanelle, the poem should adhere to that form’s basic structure. A complete discussion of the many and varied formal structures for poems in English may be found in such books as Lewis Turco’s The New Book of Forms or Philip Dacey’s and David Jauss’s Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms.

Conclusion: We hope the criteria listed above helps you to better understand the basic guidelines our judges use to select submitted poems. It is impossible to exactly define what makes a good poem, but it is possible to show the qualities most often found in such poems.

Note: We respect the right of individuals to freely express themselves in poetry, but we do not accept poetry that is explicitly offensive. Therefore, we ask that poets who submit their work to our contests to be considerate of this policy.

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