2023 FALL ADULT CONTEST RESULTS
TRADITONAL– ELEGY, JUDGE DEREK SHEFFIELD
1st Place: Steve Slemenda, “Elegy”
2nd Place: John Miller, “Help Me Finish”
3rd Place: Elisa Carlsen, “Beneath Sonoma Range”
1st HM: M.L. Lyons, “The Vanishing”
2nd HM: Davis J.S. Pickering, “Summer 2020, Portland Oregon—an Elegy (of Sorts)
3rd HM: Vivienne Popperl, “To the Members of the Congregation of the Restored Synagogue in St. Polten, Austria Who Perished in the Holocaust”
Judge’s Comments:
What I admire about these poems is how they convey the universal experience of mourning through specific details. In each case, in one way or another, these poems make me feel the sorrow by giving me a particular sense of what or whom exactly has been lost.
In “Elegy,” the word music and surprising imagery are doing beautiful work. Listen to these L sounds and more in the first two stanzas:
Somewhere at the last light they saw
the rain held in a street lamp’s aura
and farther down a darker street
puddles caught the rippling of stars
This poem really sings! And it is concise. In other words, the words that have been left out make it all the more compelling. I take a big breath now at that last couplet. This poem will stay with me.
The detail of the mirror and the constellation in “Help Me Finish” is original and gorgeous and like “Elegy,” this poem sings. Make sure to read them both aloud, as I have been doing this morning, for myself and for my friend Liz.
You gotta love a dirt bike poem. Don’t see those every day! “Beneath Sonoma Range” is doing some interesting things blending the staccato, spondee-filled shorter lines with those two italicized moments. This poem puts me in mind, in the best ways, of B.H. Fairchild’s Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest.
I want everyone to know that we do still have elephants! And many of us are working hard to keep them here. That said, I appreciate the sentiment of “The Vanishing.” Again, the specifics are doing important work in this poem, like “the hammers of tinkling keys.” I am reminded, in the best ways, of Rose McClarney’s poem “After the Removal of 30 Types of Plants and Animals from the Junior Dictionary.”
“Summer 2020, Portland Oregon—An Elegy (Of Sorts)” As those kids in the poem might say, I feel that. The details carry this poem for me. I am worried about our cities. Our Portland and our Seattle. I know it’s complicated, but we really need to do better.
“To the Members of the Congregation of the Restored Synagogue in St. Polten, Austria Who Perished in the Holocaust” The details in the second and third stanzas do the heavy lifting in this poem. Thank you for writing it. Maybe if more of us kept the Holocaust closer to heart we would treat each other better. Yeah, I’m talking to you, Putin. The image in the penultimate stanza reflects one in one of the great poems in the language. Read Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Facing It” and you’ll see what I mean.
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Elegy, 1st Place, Steve Slemenda
Somewhere at the last light they saw
the rain held in a street lamp’s aura
and farther down a darker street
puddles caught the rippling of stars
Once they were the saints of predawn days
chasing heaven in the night with cries
like a promise of loss in their eyes
in their eyes the lost promise of love
once there was a heaven in the night when
moonlight shed her skirt to dance on sand
and something that they thought would last
chased them green and dying into the past
Steve Slemenda is a founding member of the Silverton Poetry Association and the Mid-Valley Poetry Society. He has been a main organizer of the annual Silverton Poetry Festival since 2000. He hosts a biweekly radio program, Poetry on the Air, on listener-supported KMUZ FM in Salem. Retired from a career teaching English and Film Studies at Chemeketa Community College, Steve lives with his wife in Silverton, where he reads, writes, and avoids arithmetic.
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Help Me Finish, 2nd Place, John Miller
(for Alex Leavens)
In the morning I hung a mirror,
chose to do something practical
to honor you.
At the memorial, I was stung by a bee
and I believed this was you
speaking to me.
Hours later, the sting invisible
but I could feel it there,
in my writing hand.
The mirror would hold the night,
intact and glass. Behind it
I made a constellation
in the drywall— first,
the mounting screws didn’t align.
Then the hooks.
The work had made me late.
I wonder if I was feeling that
from you.
I ignored the sting. You would.
There was too much else to learn.
I flew around the service,
determined to remember. They did.
We all did. Tried to break through.
Remembered you.
John Miller’s chapbook Olympic was published by The Poetry Box in 2022. His poetry has also featured at the Elisabeth Jones Art Center’s Festival of Feelings and at The Connecticut Poetry Festival. His poetry has appeared in West Trade Review, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Third Wednesday, A Literary & Arts Journal, the anthology Opening the Gate, River Heron Review, and others.
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BENEATH SONOMA RANGE , 3rd Place, Elisa Carlsen
(for D. Maddox and S. Coutts)
Dirt Bike & Big Truck jacked up
Key-Light leaded half-moon,
mad wild teenage gods racing
on two lanes, two a.m.
Grass Valley, NV.
full speed, fences blur eyes blur
Too Fast For Love
heart pumping metal blasting
no lights scary now Big Truck
can’t tell Dirt Bike slowed down
brake lights, tires squeal
and the space between the observer
and the observed disappears…
Big Truck holds Dirt Bike at the scene,
cops come handcuffs zero-sum
fate sealed, Star City, NV six months on
heart broke Big Truck gets drunk,
gonna see Dirt Bike down where
Venus Road dead ends at the
train tracks tired now lays down,
no clouds tracks sing grinding steel,
pierced night no dreams no fight:
an engine comes / an engine goes
and sorrow is
that interval of time…
Elisa Carlsen grew up in Humboldt County, Nevada. A contemplative, outsider poet, artist, and rusted metal fanatic, Elisa’s writing has appeared in SixFold, VoiceCatcher, Anti-Heroin Chic, Nevada Arts Council, Oranges Journal, and Brushfire. Elisa is the author of Cormorant (Unsolicited Press, 2023), winner of the Lower Columbia Regional Poetry Contest, a finalist for the Editor’s Prize at Harbor Review, and nominee for Best of the Net, 2023.
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Derek Sheffield is the author of Not for Luck, selected by Mark Doty for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, and Through the Second Skin, runner-up for the Emily Dickinson First Book Award and finalist for the Washington State Book Award. He is the co-editor of Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy and Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry. His awards include a special mention in the 2016 Pushcart Anthology and the James Hearst Poetry Prize judged by Li-Young Lee. Derek lives with his family on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains in Central Washington and is the poetry editor of Terrain.org