What is madness?
Is it love? Is it poetry? The state of society? Risking your life for a thrill? Insomnia? Mythological mania? Or just the old fashioned mental asylum kind.
What is poetry?
Is it rhyme? Is it narrative? Is it abstract like a van Goh painting, or lucid like a mountain lake?
Well according to you, my friends, it all of that and more. I would like to thank you all for participating in my very strange contest prompt. For me it was rather maddening to judge this contest. By the time I finally I got it down to 21 poems, I read them over and over again, trying to get the number smaller ... but after several re-reads, I just couldn't do it.
Truly, this was the toughest contest yet for me to judge.
I bet you're all wondering where in the world I came up with the phrase, "At the Mountains of Madness". Well to tell you the truth it wasn't my idea, but actually a short story title by an obscure author in the 30s, H. P. Lovecraft. He was an odd fellow, who popularized the genre, Weird Fiction, and is actually the inspiration for a lot of modern horror authors, like Stephen King, for instance.
In the particular story it was about a research crew heading to Antarctica. They ended up discovering a long lost civilization beyond their comprehension and needless to say ... descened into madness.
What stuck with me so much about the title was that it was simultaneously literal AND figuritive. They were literally climbing icy mountains on their journey, while also getting closer and closer to completely losing their minds ... I thought it would make for an interesting challenge, and I wasn't disappointed. The amount of directions you guys took this blew me away ... tip-toing between the straightforward and the very abstract.
Only two entries actually caught onto my reference to the story: At the Edge of the Precipice and Eldritch Quest.
Thanks everyone, yet again, for participating! I appreciate your patience with me :)
-Tim