New Mexico CultureNet

WebSlam VIII – Round 3

Prompts

Submissions are closed for Round 3.

Students responded to the following prompts for Round 3. Scroll down to read their work.

  1. Write a poem with food as its central focus. Be specific to create tone and meaning. Consider using the Internet to find facts, recipes and stories that might flesh out your poem.

  2. Write a poem about a work of art. The poem can be about something in your home, something your mother or father made, or something you saw in a gallery or museum. Describe the work as clearly as possible—write a picture of it for your reader. Avoid value-laden words such as “beautiful” or “good.”

  3. Create a poem using a modern take on a classical form: sonnet, villanelle, pantoum, or sestina.
    Sonnet: A short poem with fourteen lines, usually ten-syllable rhyming lines, divided into two, three, or four sections.
    Villanelle: A 19-line poem, originally French, that uses only two rhymes and consists of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain.
    Pantoum: A form of verse in which the second and fourth lines of each four-line verse are repeated as the first and third lines of the following verse
    Sestina: A poem of six six-line stanzas and a three-line envoy, with the last words of the first six lines repeated, in different order, at the ends of the other lines. Also called sextain.

Poems

Going Home
Jennifer Abeita — Santa Fe Indian School
rhinored72@yahoo.com

It burns sometimes, but I welcome the fire
From my Uncle Jimmy’s fields, to the bowl in front of me
The aroma of freshly roasted green chile
Brings me home to my grandma’s adobe house.

From my Uncle Jimmy’s fields, to the bowl in front of me,
I savor the spicy dish of desert Gods that
Brings me home to my grandma’s adobe house,
Where hands sting wonderfully from peeling charred chile skins

I savor the spicy dish of desert gods that
Is the very blood running through my intricate veins,
Where my hands sting wonderfully from peeling charred chile skins
And lips curve in lunar eclipses, radiating warmth.

Warm memories of bubbling pots on a wood stove
Brings me home to my grandma’s adobe house,
Where the first spoonful of green goodness warms my soul;
It burns sometimes, but I welcome the fire.


Reviewer:     Manuel Gonzalez, xicanopoet@yahoo.com
Rating: 8.7
Review: That was a beautiful poem about green chile. you show how this dish is more than food to you. It’s your family, your culture, your heritage. From your uncle’s fields to your grandmother’s adobe house, and the way you repeated the line “Brings me home to my grandma’s adobe house” is wonderful.

Posted: Nov/20/2006 11:52 am

Reviewer:     Danny Solis, eldannysolis@yahoo.com
Rating: 9.0
Review: Excellent use of form.
Many good things about this poem.
I think it is at its’ best when it it using simple images to describe its’ theme.
The lunar eclipse thing threw me a bit.
Good job at making a much used theme, green chile, fresh and inviting.
Thanks-ds

Posted: Nov/21/2006 5:24 pm

« prev poem

next poem »

WebSlam participants