Hello, Soupers, and happy first day of November. I am allowing one more night before I pass my judgment on the poems in my Pleiades contest. My criteria were three, and points ranged from 1 to 15. As of now, I have only 10 poems with 13 to 15 points. Were this a Premiere Contest, I would finish it now. However, for the few whose poems were really cute but had a flaw or two, I want to give you a chance to fix it up.
These are the items that gave me concern as I looked over the entries today.
1) Several poets had at least one line that used seven instead of six syllables. A few people used 7 syllables in every single line. This is your chance to rectify that.
2) Several poets used wrong titles. The titles I allowed were mostly plural nouns. They were these; Opals, Libra, Scorpio, Marigolds, Swans, Maples and Pumpkins. A few used singular when I wanted a plural noun and they wrote a cute poem. That can easily be corrected if you see my blog before tomorrow. A few people used a plural title but wrote using singular verbs as if the title were singular. This can also be easily rectified. Also, this was not mentioned in my rules, but if you used the title word as the first word of one of your lines, that is a bit lazy but I will accept it if you did it in only one line.
3) Word usage, spelling and punctuation. I’ve said this many times. If you cannot punctuate properly, just don’t do it. Poor punctuation counts against people who enter my contests. Some poets used words that are considered archaic or that had nothing to do with the meaning I think they were trying to convey. The form Pleiades is not a difficult one, but the choice of words, particularly at the first of each line, is really important.
The above items were the things that most concerned me. My final criterion is simply how well I like a poem. If it uses awkward phrasings or illogical words, and if it seems thrown together without much thought, I won’t like it that much. A few poets got creative this time and used metaphors or even some rhyme. I was not against that. In fact, I usually loved it.
A few poets have asked me not to mention why they placed lower than other poems when I leave them my comment. Therefore, I will not be doing that any more when I give my congratulations. I will only say the thing(s) I liked. In the future, if you have questions or if you want to know why one of your poems gets an N/A or a low placement, please Soupmail me. Nobody is perfect. I have messed up and done incorrect syllable counts or made typos in contests, and I know how disheartening it feels to get NA’d for a small flaw in a standard contest in which there are many winners. I can’t promise many winners tomorrow, but perhaps poets will read this blog and comply, or maybe I will give more HM’s or N/A’s than usual.. I hope poets in my yet to be judged contest will read this blog before morning. I have a very different type of poetry contest coming soon!