The 2011 P&Q Idol winner is .....

I would like to thank everyone who participated in this contest.
It has been a wonderful experience and I enjoyed every poem submitted.

Wonderful job contestants !!!!

To the 3 final contestants ... you all did a magnificent job with this form. A very difficult form that I am sure had you pulling your hair at times.

~I applaud all 3 ladies~
And one even had to submit the entire poem via phone. I can only imagine how many times she cursed me ... lol

Many thanks to the judges who devoted their time and did such a wonderful job.
I appreciate all you three ladies have done to make this contest such a huge success.

Now the unmasking of the judges ...
Miss Sibyllene
Miss Dixiedaisy(Kay)
Miss Ann Marie

A few words from our judges.

"First let me say that it has been a pleasure reading such delightful poems. These three top poets have done an exquisite job with the form. I know there can only be one winner, though I would personally vote them all a 10.5 if I could. This was an extremely challenging round that the remaining poets proved they deserved to be a part of. My hats off to them for accomplishing such beautiful writes. Also Kudos to Luanne for such a nice well thought out contest."

"First of all, I'm very grateful to have been chosen to judge this contest.
Luanne has done a fantastic job in these challenges and a great job was done by all in the previous rounds!

Congratulations to these three for making it to the final round and BRAVO to them for putting out three wonderful sestinas! "

And the moment we have all been waiting for ......

FINAL RESULTS
BPs in ( )

POEM 1
All I own

10.5 + (3) + 6 + (1) + 7.5 + (2) = total points 30

COMMENT : I thought this was the most original of the three poems submitted. There were a couple of things I thought were overdone, like the repetition of "And" as a beginning word in five different sentences, though it didn't take away from the power of the poem. Made up word describing the poem..... Magtabulous! I gave this the highest rating of the three based on the envoy which I believe tied the poem very nicely together and didn't seem forced to fit the words in that you used. It was natural and beautiful. Awesome Job!

COMMENT : I thought the six chosen "end words" worked well for the first couple of stanzas, but seemed to lose their punch as time went on. It started to feel as though the poet was stretching, trying to think of different ways to use them (cast and moon, most notably). However, this is a hard, hard form to conquer, so some of that is to be expected. I quite liked a few of the phrases, such as the first line. I also thought "sing," "writing," and "for" kept their originality throughout the poem.

The grammar is generally fine. However, I would take out the comma at the end of stanza 4 line 1, change "whom" to "who," as it's used subjectively rather than objectively. I'm also curious about the comma to end the poem. I get the impression that it's not intentional.

COMMENT : Most of your end words are good, but you made your self end one line of every stanza with a preposition. Now I'm all for "breaking the rules of language" by choice, but not as often as you were forced to do here. Other than that, I think you did very well with your story.

POEM 2
Completion

6.5 + (2) + 9 + (3) + 7 + (2) = total points = 29.5

COMMENT : Though I scored this the lowest of the three, I would like to give credit where it is due. I thought the insertion of the quote from Maya Angelou was very nice. I also loved the play on the words that you had to use, like having to use not and you used in a couple of lines "forget me not" and cannot. Awesome use of those words and making it your own and still adhering to the form rules. However, the poem as a whole had what I consider a few grammatical errors.
"Silent tears on pallid cheeks, he sing for"

^^Should have been "sings"

"To turn away he can not
spellbound, he has lost his will"

^^ Should be "can not be spellbound"

The envoy in this poem was not as clear as the other two in my opinion. It seemed as though it was forced to work the words in.
Though the was a difficult challenge that I, myself, would find hard to adhere to, you have done a wonderful job. Awesome write.

COMMENT : My one real criticism of this poem is that I thought it could use more punctuation within the stanza, to separate out distinct phrases. With only one period at the end of each stanza, it was sometimes hard to figure out where one though ended and the next came in.

Aside from that, I think the author made a very smart move in their choice of ending words. They are subtle enough that they don't stick out and become distracting. It makes their repetition seem natural, rather than forced.

While I think that this form forced the author to drag out the subject matter, I think they kept a clear purpose throughout, which was summarized elegantly in their closing tercet.

COMMENT : I like that you made your ends words form a line themselvs in the first stanza, However, I feel your word choice was fairly weak. Just like the poem above, You made your self end one line of every stanza with a preposition. Your story itself was good and I enjoyed it.

POEM 3
Love's Epiphany

8.5 + (3) + 7 + (2) + 10 + (3) = total points = 33.5

COMMENT : I loved the storyline in this poem and a lot of the imagery it provided. Some say adjectives are overdone in poetry, to me it is what defines it. Several words throughout this poem made it live and sing to me. "Scarlet", "Hazel", "Velvet" and "malignant". The envoy was powerful my opinion is that it needs just one more word to make it more powerful, insert "in" between believe and not or after not it would read the same and gives it a defining seperation not just to believe in faith but have Hope to live. Awesome Job and I loved the words used as your base.

COMMENT : I was impressed by this author's use of the six concluding words. Since they are not as "everyday," I had expected them to stick out more jarringly, but in fact they seemed to flow pretty well. Occasionally, it seems like (had the rules allowed for it) a different form of the ending word would have been better suited, such as in "His smile embraced the sole reason she sprung to live." Live works... kind of... but "life" would have been more harmonious. Since the form of the word can't be altered, however, I think the preceding sentence could have used some tweaking to make the concluding word fit better.

I found the vocabulary a bit wordy - not every noun needs a fancy adjective in front of it. The surplus of words made the story of the poem harder to pick out. However, the concluding tercet was clear and deft, and seemed to provide a nice ending to the subject of the poem. I applaud everyone who worked so hard to capture this ridiculously demanding structure!

COMMENT : Amazing! Your end words, although common, were strong, meaningful choices.
Your sestina flowed in such a way that those words fit naturally where they were, not like the lines were written around the words that had to be there.
When I first saw the short lines of your envoy, I thought that surely it would seem out of place. Gladly, I was mistaken! It was a perfect conclusion to a very engaging story.

She fought her way through "THE RHYME", "THE PACKAGES","THE FIREBALL" and the grueling "SESTINA"

And now stands before us as

" THE WINNER OF THE 2011 P&Q IDOL "

~DRUM ROLL ~

CONGRATULATIONS
~*~*~*~ BLISSFUL ~*~*~*~

Take a bow Miss Blissful ... today is your day to shine !!!!!

RESULTS FOR EACH ROUND ALONG WITH THE POETS SOON TO FOLLOW ....

POEMS/POETS TOTALS RANKING HIGHEST TO LOWEST
ROUND 1

#1 --- POEM 1 Novella 30.5 POINTS (Britt)
#1 --- POEM 10 Selene 30.5 POINTS (Melpomene)

#2 --- POEM 6 Overcoming 29.5 POINTS (Beautiful Chaos)

#3 --- POEM 7 Here I Am 25 POINTS (Ingrid)
#3 --- POEM 11 Cataclysm 25 POINTS (Courageous Dreamer)

#4 --- POEM 5 The Art of Intimacy 24.5 POINTS (Blissful)
#4 --- POEM 12 When Love Sours 24.5 POINTS (Bob Shank)

#5 --- POEM 4 Marble Halls 24 POINTS (Brillant aka Sunshine)
#6 --- POEM 3 Lady of the Lake 22.5 POINTS (Michael D Nally TC)
#7 --- POEM 2 Freedom on the Open Road (Ottava Rima) 22 POINTS (AJ)
#8 --- POEM 9 Boiling Blood 20.5 POINTS (Lioness)

------
#9 --- POEM 13 Losing Faith 19 POINTS (Yaki Hope)
#10 --- POEM 8 Captive 18.5 POINTS (Jad)
#11 --- POEM 14 EMPTY 18 POINT (Chelsey)

______________________________________________________________

POEMS/POETS TOTALS RANKING HIGHEST TO LOWEST
ROUND 2

#1 --- POEM 3 Within Me (Courageous Dreamer)
#2 --- POEM 1 Within Me (Britt)
#3 --- POEM 4 Within Me (Blissful)
#4 --- POEM 6 Within Me (Bob Shank)
#5 --- POEM 5 Within Me (Melpomene)
#6 --- POEM 9 My Prison (Beautiful Chaos)
#7 --- POEM 2 Within Me (Brillant aka Sunshine)
#8 --- POEM 10 Without You (Ingrid)

--------
#9 --- POEM 7 Rivers and Mountains Triple Haiku (AJ)
#10 --- POEM 8 Without You (Michael D Nalley TC)
#11 --- POEM 11 Without You (Lioness)

_______________________________________________________________

POEMS/POETS TOTALS RANKING HIGHEST TO LOWEST
ROUND 3

#1 --- POEM 7 All That Blooms 29 POINTS (Melpomene)
#2 --- POEM 6 A Lover's Midnight Mourn 28 POINTS (Blissful)
#3 --- poem 3 Queen of night 27.5 POINTS (Ingrid)

-------
#4 --- POEM 4 Fragile 24.5 POINTS (Courageous Dreamer)
#5 --- POEM 1 Mourn to Heal 23 POINTS (Britt)
#6 --- POEM 2 Harvest Moon 22.5 POINTS (Bob Shank)
#7 --- POEM 5 Find Some Hope 22 POINTS (Beautiful Chaos)

______________________________________________________________

POEMS/POETS TOTALS RANKING HIGHEST TO LOWEST
FINAL ROUND

#1 --- POEM 3 Love's Epiphany 33.5 POINTS (Blissful)
#2 --- POEM 1 All I own 30 POINTS (Melpomene)
#3 --- POEM 2 Completion 29.5 POINTS (Ingrid)

Congratulations Bliss! You did a wonderful job and I am very pleased with the results. Also I would like to thank those three lovely judges for the time and effort they put into this poetry contest and for there great abilities as judges! :] I would also like to thank all those who participated! You all did a wonderful job and a lot better then me obviously! :P

Lastly I would like to thank Lu. You have done a incredible job with this contest and you have really put a lot into it and made it really fun to partake in. I congratulate you! :]

How shall we celebrate? XD

Awww thank you Jad, you are so sweet.

Hmmm I say we celebrate with some .... black forest cake yummmm
Woooooot

First of all I want to thank Lu, you pushed me to write in ways that were out of my comfort zone and I loved it! Thank you for holding such a wonderful challenge that was filled with diversity.

Thank you to the judges, it was very sweet of you all to donate your time so generously to this challenge. You all did great! :)

Great job to everyone that joined in, I know it wasn't easy.

CAKE!!!! :] Sounds like a good idea to me! :]

Great Job to all of the poets who entered. Some of these writes were absolutely moving.

Luanne you have done a wonderful job with this contest. My hats off to you for such a well organized contest. I know I already said that I just wanted to say it again. Ha!

CONGRATS BLISS! Do you get a beautiful crown, bouquet of roses and new car? Yeah I am combining Miss Universe pageant and Idol. lol

Congratulations to everyone! I do NOT envy you for having to face down the dreaded sestina! I saw the challenge and swore under my breath.

Lu... awesome job. Thanks for organizing everything so fluently!

Dixiedaisy, I love the way you think!

Blissful!!! Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you!!

Can't wait until the next one :)

Congrats to the winner, to Melpomene and to all who entered, it was a difficult challenge!

Congrats Bliss! So proud of you! & also to Ingrid & Mel! It was very hard to tell who made it to the last round, you all wrote wonderful sestinas!

Congrats Bliss! You rocked this contest. Awesome work. Also great work to Ingrid I thought both of the sestinas were amazing.

I swear Lu was trying to kill me in the contest. I am horrible at formed poetry so I almost had a heart attack writing it lol. & yes Britt it was me who had to write my poem in 45 minutes by a small little touch device that was really getting on my nerves! Got my desktop back now, and my laptop so phew i'm happy.

Thank you Lu for challenging me, I'm not one for contests and such they drive me insane but you pushed me to my limits. Thank you to the judges, every comment given was lovely and helped a lot when it came to look at my poems.

Again congrats BLISS! You deserve it. :)

Thank you everyone! <3

You are welcome. The judges are among the best poets on this site and I trust their judgment