Quarterfinals: 1. El Pancake vs. 5. Eŋg \\ Eŋg wins 6-(-3)

[Certain]

Welcome to the quarterfinals!

The Basics

Check-ins are not required but are always appreciated.

Verses are due Thursday, Sept. 11 at 11:59 p.m. PT. THERE ARE NO EXTENSIONS.

Votes are due Sunday, Sept. 14 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

Three votes are required from each competitor, one on each other battle. For each missing vote, two votes will be deducted. Don't worry about proving you voted, as I can handle it.

Verses may not exceed 12 lines. If the length of a writer's lines is called into question, the standard will be 15 words per line, and verses of more than 180 words will be disqualified or required to be shortened.

Standard writing and voting rules are in effect. No biting. No recycling. Votes must be explained. No editing verses after the first vote or the verses deadline. Any other issues will be resolved using Art of Writing League Season 3 rules as the basis.


Topic


Why Bother?


Good luck, @El Pancake and @Eŋg.

[Eŋg]

_carpe diem

Disturb dust on a summit’s peak as I blush from a cutting breeze,
disrupt each shoulder holding the burden of allies, and lies,
past lives crushed under bloodied feet: heart thumps (a drummer’s beat).
Cardiac movement’s hardly that prudent - exuding lust if lovers sleep.
My spirit is hungry; stomach’s weak: untouched by the coming feast.
Glories of yester-yore are ineffective gauze - hesitant lips caressed a
desolate jaw (it was never much more) - a present exists: at best the
rest is thought. Schematic, presuming you can plan, mentally,
a pattern’s renewing as ancestor’s hand gestures span centuries
but one’s path isn't proven. My mantra is brief: Man’s meant to be.
I exist in the now, the air whips with a sound my mind garners,
to live in the past or look to the future’s stasis, so why bother?

[PancakeBrah]

She'd strike the piano. The ivory was silk.
Auburn haired. Angry; there was cilantro in every tile she'd pluck.
Allegro, with a twitch of discord as she played the notes
against the smile's she struck ignoring her layered tropes.

Painting the keys. The 'Hello Kitty' ironic emblazement
as a stroke against the hedonistic. Punk rock, her sonic displacement;
playing sharp keys in the place of harmonic arrangements,
re-arranging the monotone sonnets she played with.

She's a dream for a catch; finding a note in the meager,
amongst the local parochial seekers. You trying to grasp at a ghost in the ether;
long gone once you realize the soma's aware;
why bother when you've already lost the most that was there, never to better your chances.

[oats]

Eng:

Disturb dust on a summit’s peak as I blush from a cutting breeze,
disrupt each shoulder holding the burden of allies, and lies,
past lives crushed under bloodied feet: heart thumps (a drummer’s beat).
Cardiac movement’s hardly that prudent - exuding lust if lovers sleep.
My spirit is hungry; stomach’s weak: untouched by the coming feast.

The most immediate strength of your verse here is your complex rhyme schemes. Coupled with the loftiness of your language, and this is one of the strongest verse mechanics-wise of the tournament thus far. Really strong writing. The allusions to past and future lives were tough, but meaty. Once I got access to the content (took a couple reads), I really loved the idea of past lives strewn across the mountain underfoot your bloody boots, killing the past to move forward. Equally loved the coming feast of the future, how it portrays a certain hopeful confidence for what the future holds, but how it's in the future and thus isn't real; you're still hungry in spite of it. Really strong opening section.

Glories of yester-yore are ineffective gauze - hesitant lips caressed a
desolate jaw (it was never much more) - a present exists: at best the
rest is thought. Schematic, presuming you can plan, mentally,
a pattern’s renewing as ancestor’s hand gestures span centuries
but one’s path isn't proven. My mantra is brief: Man’s meant to be.

Maintaining the top-tier wording and language impressively, good shit. love the image of nostalgic pride being gauze to cover up wounds - which is ineffective. The "hesitant lips" to "never much more" was good writing, but I struggled to connect it meaningfully, kind of felt like a reference to a youthful love lost stapled in there. But I could be just reading it wrong. Loved the "at best the rest is thought" line. Not a new idea by any means, but a really fresh way to present the idea. The focus on the past here was well-conceived, though I wonder if it unbalanced the verse a bit, seeing as how the opening section was a good mix of past/future imagery, then this part was primarily past. Nothing juts out as incongruous, but something to think about. Ancestor's hand gestures span centuries is a great, vivid line. I would have liked if the "be" was italicized or something, to put emphasis on the overall theme of living in the present.

I exist in the now, the air whips with a sound my mind garners,
to live in the past or look to the future’s stasis, so why bother?

You held back the complex language here in exchange for clarity, which I like. I do appreciate the metaphorical mud to dig through, makes for a fun, rewarding challenge, but if I'm straining throughout the whole verse it can be detrimental. I think this provided a clear look at what the rest of the verse is about. If you only read the verse once, I don't think you'll get much out of it. But I've read both of these verses several times by now, and this closer really helped me make sensible conclusions about the rest of the imagery upon further re-reads. So it was really effective, and I like the spin on the topic - took a more positive route (cross your fingers that certain doesn't vote), and you mixed in genuine thoughtfulness with intellectualism, which is very difficult.

Overall, this is a really dope verse imo. I hope other voters take the time to read it through more than twice, because its density is offputting at first. But the content starts to align and take shape after a couple more reads, and the verse takes off from there. This was excellent writing start to finish.


Pancake:

She'd strike the piano. The ivory was silk.
Auburn haired. Angry; there was cilantro in every tile she'd pluck.
Allegro, with a twitch of discord as she played the notes
against the smile's she struck ignoring her layered tropes.

Opening was a bit shaky writing-wise. This could be because there was a firmer reliance on the end rhymes in your schemes than in Eng's, so "silk" and "pluck" was a little jarring for me. The writing was elegant with a touch of contemporary angst - not many imbue their word with as much emotion as you, and yet you have never (to my memory) crossed over into melodrama, even briefly. It's an edge you have over pretty much everyone else. Cilantro in the tiles was odd to me though. Though I didn't like the rhyme, pluck was a great word to use to describe a frantic pianist at work. Strong start overall, a couple of minor irritants but nothing of significance.

Painting the keys. The 'Hello Kitty' ironic emblazement
as a stroke against the hedonistic. Punk rock, her sonic displacement;
playing sharp keys in the place of harmonic arrangements,
re-arranging the monotone sonnets she played with.

Loved the image of playing the piano like painting. I'm a sucker for pianos imagery tbh. The juxtaposition of punk rock/hello kitty/playing classical music was effective, and it made a lush backdrop of her character through small details. Dope. I guess there is a certain monotony to harmony. The parallels of her piano playing taking an individual shape and breaking free from the tradition alongside her unique demeanor and appearance was well-received.

She's a dream for a catch; finding a note in the meager,
amongst the local parochial seekers. You trying to grasp at a ghost in the ether;
long gone once you realize the soma's aware;
why bother when you've already lost the most that was there, never to better your chances.

The rhymes picked up a bit, which I like. "She's a dream for a catch" is a unique turn of phrase. It reads oddly at first, but it has a suggestive current to it. The addition of spirituality worked here with the message you were aiming for. That is (how I see it, at least), that this woman is playing out of a sense of loss. I took it as she lost a lover of some sort, but is now finding herself through the process, much like she departed from what she had been used to playing on the piano. But that chord of individuality is so fleeting and difficult to grasp, much like grasping a ghost in the ether (excellent line, btw). That moment of freedom vanishes upon self-awareness (soma, another top-notch choice, to outline her as a shell of consciousness), so why bother? Go back to playing the Brandenburg Concertos or something. The content of this last part was great, though I wasn't as thrilled about the change from describing "her" to addressing "you." Nothing major, some people get hung up on it, but I do like it as a tool to generalize and create a greater sense of implication - this woman is YOU, the reader, we are all part of this human experience and here is a single example of it in a microcosm. So in that sense, it works, but I think it would have been better had the last 4 lines stuck completely in "her" or "you" language, not try to blend both of them in it. The last line not rhyming was cool I think, though I'm curious to see what others say about it. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth, in a good way, by punctuating the final thought for us to leave with. Not many people would even try that, and you made it work.


Vote: Well fuck. I must have read each of these verses 8 times now. I should have chosen a different match to follow up on, because I've been really indecisive about this one. Eng clearly outwrote Cake, which is crazy for me to type tbh, because I don't think I've ever seen an instance where someone even slightly outwrote him (myself included). But where Cake lagged in literary finesse, he more than made up for in the background narrative and humanity of his character, accessed through well-planted details. I give the slight edge to Cake's angle and overall writing strategy, but the few hiccups stippled throughout his verse gave enough room for Eng to snake this one with a less novel central idea that was presented well and executed nearly flawlessly. I will be really interested to see how this turns out, because I've changed my mind several times about this, one of the closest matches I've had the pleasure of reading in recent memory. It sounds trite, but it really does come down to personal preference, as both are deserving of the win here. Frontrunner for BOTW.

[Split]

Originally Posted by El Pancake

She'd strike the piano. The ivory was silk.
Auburn haired. Angry; there was cilantro in every tile she'd pluck.
Allegro, with a twitch of discord as she played the notes
against the smile's she struck ignoring her layered tropes.

"cilantro in every tile she'd pluck." I'm not a fan of this descriptor. Don't you typically cut cilantro? Like, a brief dash of flavor in each note? I think you could've worked this concept harder. The last line is better. Last two lines. They weren't new but they were well-placed.

Painting the keys. The 'Hello Kitty' ironic emblazement
as a stroke against the hedonistic. Punk rock, her sonic displacement;
playing sharp keys in the place of harmonic arrangements,
re-arranging the monotone sonnets she played with.

Okay, cool summary of punk rock/ her attitude.

She's a dream for a catch; finding a note in the meager,
amongst the local parochial seekers. You trying to grasp at a ghost in the ether;
long gone once you realize the soma's aware;
why bother when you've already lost the most that was there, never to better your chances.

Feel like this is dually describing the musician and the narrator's fleeting feelings towards her. Not sure I understand your use of "soma" after I googled it, but I took it to mean a dimension of feeling that has closure. Not like, an initial neural spark but something safely interpolated in one's being.

I think this ending really saved your verse. The last two lines really fill out the atmosphere of the music & connect the musician to your narrator. Really cool adventure into the psychiatry of relating heavily to music.


[quote]

Originally Posted by Eŋg

_carpe diem

Disturb dust on a summit’s peak as I blush from a cutting breeze,
disrupt each shoulder holding the burden of allies, and lies,
past lives crushed under bloodied feet: heart thumps (a drummer’s beat).

I liked the imagery of the opening. Shrugging off the chill of a burden. "Allies and lies" was a bit rough.

Cardiac movement’s hardly that prudent - exuding lust if lovers sleep.
My spirit is hungry; stomach’s weak: untouched by the coming feast.
Glories of yester-yore are ineffective gauze - hesitant lips caressed a
desolate jaw (it was never much more) - a present exists: at best the
rest is thought. Schematic, presuming you can plan, mentally,
a pattern’s renewing as ancestor’s hand gestures span centuries
but one’s path isn't proven.

In the first three lines of this section I'm wanting more clarity. More directness. You're speaking thickly in metaphors. Looking back at the opening, I feel the "burden of allies and lies, past lives crushed under bloodied feet" and "[hunger for] the coming feast" are temporal uncertainties left unresolved. And "at best a /present/ exists, at best the rest is thought" is meant to tie these austerities to the undercurrent of anxiety in the verse. It feels dissonant, so far.

The last line is well written but a little empty, for me.

It's not that this figurative language is badly done, at all. But I do feel that here your writing is unnecessarily contorted. Anxiety for the future and worries borne by the past aren't very nuanced in and of themselves, without some characterizing struggles or doubt. Im left asking "for what?" in the face of an archetypal and vague existential crisis.

My mantra is brief: Man’s meant to be.
I exist in the now, the air whips with a sound my mind garners,
to live in the past or look to the future’s stasis, so why bother?

I like the callback to the mountain wind, a cool trick to show that all of this deliberation has taken place in the moment.




I think that each had a valiant attempt to embody a topic that essentially requires you to distance yourself rom the reader. Neither went the very easy typical route of some dude being like "life is lame the end."

I think Eng had the much more consistent verse, Cake achieved more conceptually/ thematically. There was a real satisfying sense of closure to Cake's verse despite how aloof it was descriptively. Eng was much better with wording and rhymes, but didn't cover any new ground. For all the description he put into the past and future, he concludes by telling us he is completely unchanged. Perfectly fine, but the concept is far from a new one (even for him) and I feel it fell flat as a result. Cake, too, fell back into old habits & familiar walks for his verse. Music metaphor/ wordplay, woman she cute wanna buy her drinks but shes too perfect as im rape-eyesing her from across the street in the back of my car with binoculars. Listening to music feeling things you can barely grasp hipster music my hands are literally only made of fingertips feeling satisfied even though none of my verses blossom into healthy relationships wiping off my cavaliers seats with a banana peel


In the end, though, Cake captures something more fleeting and more raw. The "why bother" that he settles into is tense, dynamic: a hammock to sink into that is pulled taut by many trees growing in different directions. It's in the woods right outside your house, and bit of a hassle to climb into it, but the view is surprisingly rewarding. Eng takes us on a hike up a foothill behind the CVS, and then we set up a tent, zip it tightly shut and then play GameBoy until our parents make us roast marshmallows or something.

V/Cake.

[kannon]

Eng. I think this is the first time I've gotten to vote on one of your battles. I'm used to seeing crazy inner rhyme schemes, but this one is a bit simpler. But still effective, as the story felt complete and not forced. After reading split vs yoda, this again seems to be told from the position of a soldier, who's just won a war and seems numb to the affects. Seems to say that the past victories haven't prevented the current wars and that this one won't prevent the next. All we can do is simply live in the now and be as we are. The imagery was strong and I feel like your word selection was borderline beautiful in places. Overall this was a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Pancake. You opened a little slow this week. The first 8bars actually were a bit slow, and you picked up in the last chunk. I felt like the description in the first segment was a little plain. "auburn hair. Angry." and the cilantro line felt weird. I imaging you didn't mean the had cilantro on the piano, but that's immediately what I envisioned. The second chunk kind of rounded out your protagonist a bit. Gave her some dimension as far as her seemingly juxtaposed personality. The last section tied it all together for me. It feels like she was maybe a prodigy in her younger years, and at some point she missed what could have been her break. So now she plays with the memories of the passion she had, while feeling like the purpose behind it is gone. The ending was a great wrap up to an otherwise good lead up.

Shit, this is a close one. I feel like eng had a consistently dope piece, while pancake had a piece that crescendoed into an awesome close. while I felt both were well written, I've gotta err on the side of consistency and give it to Eng.

[Vulgar]

Eng - I know you're very particular about what goes where in your verses, so this seemed like an intricate treatise on a mountain climber's motivation to live. It ranged from outgoing to cynical for me, and at times was a little to ubiquitous to take anything firmly rooted away from it.

Pandake - No doubts you tried to be crafty with this one. It was kind of mustard-y. What I mean by that is it was bitter where it could've been sweet, minor league tasty, shuffling without giving up a card. I thought it was okay.

I liked Eng's more. Good spar.

[Soulstice]

Pancake - my first two reactions to this were polarizing. The good news is that the piece really picked up at the end. I didn't really get the use of soma but it sort of just worked as As a placeholder for key emotions. I would say metaphor instead of placeholder but I didn't really get it. Anyways the ghost in the ether was beautiful as well as the final phrase of your piece. It sort of brings the piece to a sudden halt with an irrevocable truth bomb. It also didn't rhyme with anything which I liked a lot. The schemes were abnormal and I liked that too. There were some repetitions of words "arrangement" for instance too close together that was sort of like a pimple as I read the verse along. As well as some eh rhymes. Pluck and silk. We're those supposed to rhyme? I don't know it was a bit unpolished though. I thought the piece was about an newly unrequited love with a piano player. Maybe you described her piano playing too much buy it could be a metaphor for how she can pluck heartstrings like she can pluck keys. It evoked lots of ffeeling though so that was an added bonus.

Phone vote editing in engs feed

English - this was tight. Standing atop a mountain is a good place to start to ruminate on things with such philosophical weight. Your description of the mountain and scene setting matched u r writers voice and internal monolog well. Describing the past and future and how they affect someone was also cool. It was never much more is a good way to describe a lot of things from the past people tend to romanticize - it seems our character has his mind cleared on the summit. I liked the description of love and commitment in line 3 cclever.it points out the inattention to consequence when you live in the present you continue on to say that there is only the present. The rest is a what we thought has or think will happen - always slightly off because experience is ran through the imperfect filter of the human mind. The bit about the coming feast worked well too because it suggested the future holds no promises even of sustenance and health. You must keep forging on and put in work if you want to eat and you must keep climbing to reach the top of a mountain. Seemed like a good way to align the character. Nice. I thought hand gestures was just a way to carry the rhyme but all the other aspects of that were fine. A patterns renewing was pretty weighty and epic word choice as well.

Vote eng. I wasn't sure until I typed out this vote. Great battle.

[dead man]

ingles -- "a present exists: at best the rest is thought."

this sort of stuck out as your thesis statement. your thematic stepping stone. i was impressed as usual by your language usage but a bit off-put by the hoops you construct for the reader to jump through. subtlety is certainly one of the charms of your writing here. i suspect that it hints at a larger character trait. anyway - your descriptive verbiage never seems to let you down, although i was never a fan of your insistence on the parenthetical or your insistence on multi-syllable craftsmanship which becomes more irksome to me as the years progress. 'desolate jaw' was pretty hollow to me as a reader.. i simply could not make that work.

your message is well received. live now ft. quan.

lastly - did not necessarily feel the final lines. i think oats mentioned the significant simplifying of the language to get your point across straight. still, the age-old tactic of ending your work with the topic itself to wrap everything in a neat package seemed a bit trite for you. but oh well.

CAKETH - off bat, noting your stanza structure. traditional in some circles, not so much in our little NC nest egg.

instrumental the imagery, piano the keys. your trademark energy. cilantro on the tiles may have gone over my head? is there another definition of tiles? i was not sure where that was headed. layered tropes was an interesting word usage. 'striking smiles' is a bit of a trope itself. they are almost a staple of the community.

ghost in the ether. fuck.

i am having trouble with this work and probably should take some time to digest it before judging it competitively. i loved the switch in tenses. you introduce this silhouetted pianist and end off addressing the reader. your verse makes me feel like i have lost something dear to me and i don't even know what it is.

you accomplish, on one hand, what english could not - and that is successfully encapsulate a feeling and breathe life into something where there was not. eng, however, accomplished something else altogether -- the art of nailing a topic to the wall and shooting a bullseye in 12 lines.

you both danced around in different shoes. but its as if they were purchased from the same store.

i am torn in a real way. i am going to go with a gut impulse and award ENGLISH this vote, even though it is an exceedingly difficult choice to make.

I'm sorry if this vote did not help you at all. I've been poisoned all day. at any rate

thanks guys.

[Certain]

Eŋg leads 5-1.

[Darth Yoda]

one went descriptive in their own...sense and the other... talked about it on a more emotionally connected personal level. I liked both of these verses..quite intense. my qualm with both is that eng seems to cram a bit and seems condensed at times, even though the delivery is top notch. pancake seemed a bit off center...his aim was diagonal, not vertical to the shoot. I think the usage of intense language was a bit too focused, rather than deploying some deep emotion.. solid works from both. Voting eng on a very close contested battle.