By Sally Apokedak | June 2, 2006

It has been a wild couple of weeks here at All About Children’s Books. The staff has been in high spirits with all the funny feechie poems coming in almost daily. Thanks to all of you who entered and made this contest so much fun.

It was really hard for the judges to pick a winner.

Jonathan Rogers himself wouldn’t have even been able to pick a winner very easily. In fact he analyzed the strengths of the poems and sent me a letter this morning admitting that my panel of judges was going to be hard-pressed to choose between them.

I thought I’d share his letter with you so you could see how the creator of the feechies saw your efforts. His letter sheds light on feechie society and poetry but more than that, it is a prize in itself. You can frame it and keep it as a treasure. In the end, you’re all winners, for Jonathan Rogers himself has read and enjoyed your literary excellence. Copy this. And keep it. And pass it on to your grandchildren one day. “Sure I knew Jonathan Rogers. He said some very nice things about my poetry once, even.”

What exactly did he say? you ask. Here you go:

Dear Sally–

I don’t envy you and your staff the job of judging the feechie poetry contest. You’ve had so many great entries! Three published children’s fantasy authors jumped into the fray four, if you count me). Between Bryan Davis’s image of adhesive lip-slime and Wayne Thomas Batson’s
she-feechie with the encrusted eyes…I hate to seem prissy, but I’m still a little grossed out.

You scolded Becky Miller and Randy Mortenson for their overweight she-feechies. As you pointed out, feechies tend to be wiry and sinewy, but there’s some diversity in the population, and feechiefolks are okay with that. I’m reminded of a song I heard a while back about Louisianans’ laid back approach to life:

Down in Louisiana, it don’t matter If you’re sane as a judge or mad as a hatter…
Skinny or fatter, natty or tattered, Down in Louisiana it don’t matter.

That’s the way the feechiefolk are…they’re mostly skinny, but if you’re a little fatter, it don’t matter. So I hope you and your staff won’t penalize Becky or Randy. And in Randy’s case, the she-feechie’s rotundity wasn’t gratuitous, but the key to the joke…a swamp log becomes a catapult, launching the lovelorn feechie into a tree. Surely even the bureaucrats in Children’s Publishing News Towers can appreciate that kind of physical humor.

And speaking of Becky Miller, she produced one of my favorite witticisms of the contest: “now I’m practically lame,/ So’s I can hardly come back for more.” That’s a perfectly feechiefied sentiment–that matter-of-fact acceptance of physical trouble…no self-pity for his injury, only disappointment that he can’t get any more kisses. As for Becky’s later entry involving leg hair that can be combed…well, there’s feechie humor and there’s plain gross-out humor. Becky went over the line. I hope the Contest Sub-committee for Basic Decency docks her a point or two.

The Ivester children turned in a very strong performance. Wesley Ivester has had the advantage of visiting a few of the actual locales that inspired the wild places of Corenwald–including the springy greenbog where Aidan, Steren, and Dobro captured the hog in Swamp King (Wesley dubbed it bungee-land), the magnolia jumble where Aidan was first captured by feechies, and Providence Canyon, the original for Sinking Canyons. Which is to say, he has absorbed a good bit of feechiefaction, which oozes out in his poetry. Is that an unfair advantage? I leave it to the committee to decide.

Elsewhere in the youth division, Rhiannon and Aidan Beard both wrote great poems. Rhiannon gets extra points for being the first contestant to introduce that all-important feechie theme of motherhood (”My mama misled me…” ). More extra points for the use of the word “toothsome,” a favorite in the feechie lexicon. Aidan gets extra points just for his name. And the last line of his entry (”I found out she knows how to stomp ya” ) is pitch-perfect.

It’s too bad you declared your own kids ineligible (maybe they should appeal to one of the contest sub-committees). Their poems demonstrated very strong instincts for feechie poetry. My favorite thing about Nikki’s poem is the fact that skunk breath leads directly to an attempt to steal a kiss. That’s the kind of juxtaposition that makes feechie poetry work. And when Shane says his pitted and zitty heroine “can always beat me in a race” he touches on my favorite thing about the original feechie love song…the besotted feechie lover wants to be gallant and protect his sweet feechie pearl from all danger, but the truth is, she can take care of herself just fine. She can run faster, hit harder, spit further. The last lines of Branko’s original song read “if you’re extra tough/ I may let her whup you herself.”

With “feechie-poo” Noel went where no feechie poet has gone before. Potty humor was the elephant in the room that nobody was talking about, and Noel stood up and said, well, feechie-poo.” I was afraid Noel had opened a flood-gate of potty humor. Thankfully, only you, Sally, rose to the bait. In any case, Noel’s is a very strong stanza…and “endear her” / “fear her” — that rhyme is feechie love poetry in its most concentrated form.

Jared Romero’s poem about the near-sighted feechie–the one who accidentally hugs a tree root–is very strong. It displays a subtlety and understatement that is somewhat rare in feechie poetry. Which is to say, you get more out of it the second time through than the first time.

And how about Marie Beard raising the literary bar in the contest? Her she-feechie response poem alludes (I assume) to Sir Walter Raleigh’s “Nymph’s Reply”–the beloved’s response to Christopher Marlowe’s “Come live with me and be my love…” And later she invoked Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee.” Between hairy legs and feechie poo we needed somebody to raise the tone a little bit. I also have to give Marie some serious props for the line, “My longings itch just like a chigger.” Brilliant.

Between Marie and Pam Halter, we saw some experimentation with poetic form. I balked at it at first–a feechie poem is a feechie poem, after all–but then I sang a chorus of “Down in Louisiana it don’t matter” and I mellowed enough to enjoy what they did. I love Pam’s “reminds me of my mother/reminds me of my father” poem. That’s good stuff. Pam’s acrostic…well, let me just say that feechies are a little dubious (or, as feechies would say, ‘jubulous’ ) of acrostics. You see, they don’t spell very well.

And as for Marie’s haiku…it reminds me of an old bit of feechie lore I ran across. It seems a well-meaning civilizer writing teacher went into the swamp to teach wee-feechies how to write haiku. The feechiefolk immediately fed the teacher to some alligators. Even the civilizers (except for the writing teacher’s immediate family) weren’t all that sorry about it. They said the writing teacher was asking for it. Marie shows way too much promise as a feechie poet to risk such a fate.

And Sally, your own feechie poetry–what can I say? It’s brilliant. You have obviously drunk long and deep of the feechie ethos. Keep it up.

Best,
JR

And now for the winner . . .

After much consternation and deliberation and confabulation (and after giving thanks that several of the entrants were disqualified because they knew the author personally, already had the books, or were professional writers who can afford to buy the books their own selves) the judges have voted the stanza by Aidan Beard to be the winner with this little gem:

Her freckles is cute, iffen you give a hoot,
But if you insult them she’ll whomp ya.
Once I called her a beaut, but she rendered me mute
I found out she knows how to stomp ya.

His girl didn’t stink and that was a loss (Noel’s was the winner in the awful smelling category–the judges also loved that swamp gators feared her feechie gal–that was brilliant) and freckles were not close to the most disgusting things we saw (we had humps and fins and gnarly rough skin, slimy lips and gummy eyes–eeewwww it was pretty awful stuff) but still, Aidan’s rhythm worked well and the judges liked the way his gal whomped and stomped old Branko.

So Aidan, email me with your snail mail address and I’ll ask Jonathan to send you the books.

Thank you all for your enthusiasm (and speaking of enthusiasm it would have been odd if one of the Beard clan didn’t win with all the entries that poured in from that quarter) and for those of you who didn’t win you can click on the book covers above to buy the books from Amazon. They are infinitely worth the money, so buy a set for yourself and another for someone you
love.

And be sure to be here in October because you know what’s happening then? RK Mortenson’s next book is coming out and we will be having another fun contest. (So, no Marie, you need not write 52 feechie poems. RK’s poems are not quite as slimy. Still great fun, though, even without the swamp mud.

Because I did not have all the entries in one central location, Jonathan Rogers missed Mir’s when he was making his original comments on the poems. But he sent this through later:

In my earlier remarks, I forgot to mention Mir’s poem, posted on a different page from the rest of you. You remember this one:

Her lips are a red as a rooster’s proud head,
And her elbows as smooth as birch bark,
When she speaks I hear tunes,
Like sea water on dunes,
If the water were thrashed by a shark.

Mir claims not to have read the Wilderking books, but one wonders if perhaps she has read them more carefully than anyone. In its mention of sharks and sand dunes, this stanza seems to allude to the obscure beach feechies, which are mentioned only once, in Book 2 of the trilogy (does anybody else remember the beach feechies?) Mir gets serious trivia points.

Hmmm. I don’t even remember the beach feechies and I’ve read all three books
more than once. So . . . Good job, Mir!!!!
:yeah:

You Might Also Like