The poetry competition announced in We can has games has been a huge success. We must have more of these, and soon.
The game this time was to write verse poetry about one or more recurrent Boing Boing obsessions, with the winner to receive a Gears of War 2 Special Edition Zune 120 GB. Readers responded with a thread over two hundred messages long that's full of charming, surprising, and even impressive poetry. And if you don't read the whole thing, you have only yourself to blame.
Picking the winner was tough. At great effort and expense, I brought in the head of the science fiction line at the world's largest English-language science fiction publishing house to help me judge it, but it was still hard to narrow the choice down to a single poem. Nevertheless … (picks up envelope) … the winner is:
SpatulaLilacs @41, "Sestina of a Reluctant Copyfighter." Which, O my word, is a rigidly formal sestina that maintains both natural language and perfect iambic pentameter while developing a coherent argument about copyright issues.
That's something you don't see every day.
Sestina of a Reluctant Copyfighter
I download stuff. Not all of it is "free" —
Or meant to be, at least. But people share.
It's all right if you take what I create.
I'd never copy-shackle my own art.
I have a hankering for the obscure,
And I will stay obscure as well, by rights.I know, of course, i haven't got the right:
no "information-wanting-to-be-free"
or any other jargon can obscure
the fact that when we, as we put it, "share,"
we replicate another person's art.
Are copies something I should not create?But in the past, we couldn't just create;
the learnéd men who scribbled out our rights
did not foresee this replicable art,
which makes another of itself for free.
And if they did, why tell us not to share?
Conspiracy? Some purpose more obscure?I know, the artist's needs are not "obscure."
But I don't see the people who create
receiving, from the middle-man, their share —
they've all too often signed away their rights,
and found themselves endeavoring for free
to do a deed that's less and less an art.But certainly this isn't all of art;
just most of art that isn't so obscure.
The margins (blesséd margins!) leave you free,
uncensored and unhindered, to create.
But on the margin, who protects your rights?
Forget your rights. Embrace your fanbase. Share.If just a thousand, seeing that you share,
decide they love you and they love your art,
then you won't need to sweat about your rights.
You can be happy, healthy, and obscure,
as long as you remember to create
at least a couple things that aren't free.So free your mind before you grab your share.
Don't litigate, just go create some art!
And let the lawyers sort obscurer rights.
The top ten other poems from the thread, not in order of merit:
JustKristin @28, "We heard a crunch before it died." Emily Dickinson does tech support. (You should get a look at Kristin's other pastiches. She has a fine ear.)
Olof @29: Boing Boing does Jabberwock, or possibly Jabberwock does Boing Boing.
Cloudform @74, "Annabel LED." A popular favorite, and definitely one of the poems that made it hard to pick a single winner.
Madeley @80, "Web Zen." A small but very cute pantoum. (Note: Be impressed. Pantoums are hard, like villanelles only more so.)
Rachelboing @84: a sonnet on feet.
Lumi the Valiant @85, "The Charge of the Boing Boingers," with muttered apologies to Tennyson.
ELloyd74 @114 had the sleekest rhymes.
HKDailo @130 rapped, inventively.
Jfaehnle @168, "Sex-Bot Villanelle; or, VW5yZXF1aXRlZCBMb3Zl.".
Other notables achievements:
Props to David Carroll @43, for constructing a crossword puzzle (and later, posting the solution).
Props also to Shutz, at various points in the thread, for doing some real thinking about future games.
As was only appropriate for a competition that started on 11/11, we got three notable pastiches of famous war poems: Mel Rodriguez @50 did Wilfred Owens' "Dulce et Decorum Est"; Jazzbo @134 did John Gillespie Magee's "High Flier"; and TaoArt @150 did John McCrae's "In Flanders Fields."
Some of the best poems in the thread were written by first-time commenters. I don't yet have a complete list of them, so I'll put that in the comment thread.
Kieran O'Neill @142, "Your country's gender disjunction," was the best poem written as a comment in a current thread. Second place in that category goes to MXJohnson @132 for From "Your shoe is jacked into my eye" and "Call to makers: woman wants webcam to replace lost eye".
Oskar @33 is to be commended for his presentation, and his attitude. Entertaining your readers by showing off really well is at the heart of the game.
Triscuit @72 wrote the best haiku.
Foetusnail @187 wins for Most Improved. Second place for Most Improved: JanusNode @151, "Ode to Boing Boing."
Frazbin @202, for the tidiest poem on the least hygienic subject.
MinTphresh @91 and @183, for spiritual truth.
Other poems that a different judge might have scored higher:
TangoBrain @152, "Encryptus." :: Chriziem @141, Chriziem @141, "Steampunk Elegy." ::
Jmanooch @167, "Carousel: On a Reading of Boing Boing." :: Aila @158, "Guerrilla Gardener." :: MFGG @48, a panegyric sonnet. :: CK @87, who is funny and accurate. :: Mr. Orion @104, who is also fun to read, and would undoubtedly have scored higher if he'd labeled his work as a haiku sequence rather than a series of one-offs. :: Deviant @107's heroic quatrains about a boy and his sexbot making a stand against the zombie apocalypse. :: Boba Fett Diop @111 doing Lucas via Homer via Richmond Lattimore. :: WillAlex @173, a zombie sonnet. :: Met Ower @131, "Lurker Lament."
