Magyar Haiku

[stdesjardins]

Today I went to the Poetry Iron Chef competition at Worldcon, featuring Iron Chefs Joe Haldeman and Lawrence Schoen (noted Klingon linguist; the judges ruled that only poems in English or French were acceptable). In each round the Iron Chefs were required to produce poems of a given form and containing a "secret ingredient", a word drawn from a hat, and the audience was encouraged to participate and compete against the Iron Chefs.

I was too chicken to stand up and read, but I'll put the poems I completed here.

The first form chosen was haiku, and somebody in the audience¹ contributed the word "Magyar". What I came up with:

Friendly Magyar tribes
Share drink, though they share no tongue.
Egészsegedre.

("Egészsegedre" is a traditional Hungarian toast, which means literally "To your health".)

The second round was sonnets containing the word "wicked". I've never written a sonnet, and I didn't even attempt one.

The third round was limericks containing "NASCAR". I tried to write one, but didn't finish, and the four lines I came up with were pretty dull.

The final round was tanka—a bit like haiku, but 5-7-5-7-7—containing "spelunking". My poem:

Spelunking takes you
Down where wicked Magyar trolls
Trace winding courses
Down to a wondrous realm.
NASCAR: The Final Frontier.

(I originally had "Driving to a wondrous realm", with two syllables on "wondrous", but decided "Down" and "won-der-ous" sounded better. I didn't change the line before time ran out, though, so this version is technically a cheat. I should probably change the first down, too.)

I am impressed by the poets who not only completed all four poetic forms, but did it well.

1: Contributions were anonymous.