The Poetry Category of the 2006 Jade Ring Contest included 135 entries by 52 writers. I was delighted to be able to judge this category and, after review of the material, I would like to offer several recommendations. Specific comments on each winning entry are included at the end.

First, I would suggest that in the future a separate category be considered for humorous verse. Judging humorous verse along with more serious poetry is really weighing apples against oranges (or perhaps watermelons against cherries). The humorous verse will usually be judged second best. Humorous verse possesses its own unique set of standards and should be appreciated for those special qualities and characteristics contained within its special genre. I mention this because there was some very good humorous verse among the poems I read and judged, but they don't show up on the final screen. Humorous verse deserves its own separate category. I believe that WRWA should separate humorous verse from the rest of poetry for the same reasons that it separates prose into various categories.

Second, and I suppose this is one curse of living in the age of Harry Potter, so much of what tries to pass as poetry in our time gives evidence that contemporary writers trying to write poetry do not read very much poetry-at least their poetry reflects that they have given up reading the great past masters.

Our manic preoccupation with development of an individual style does not give us the right to suspend the principles of good writing, which have always involved clarity of expression, considerate communication with our audience, and careful crafting of our material. I remember one of my teachers reminding us that the more we try to be different, the more we look like everyone else. There is no place for purposeless misspelling, and improper usage is grammatically incorrect in poetry as well as in prose. The basic principles of good writing apply equally to prose and to poetry. We don't have enough time to read everything, so I would urge writers to develop their models by reading the best. Read Blake, and Keats, and Whitman, and Dickinson, and Yeats, and Frost, and Roethke, and Wright. And when you finish them, reread them.

Third, and I suppose this is another curse of our early 21st century, so much of what tries to pass as poetry in our time gives evidence that it is written totally as individual expression with little or no care for writing as communication designed to reach another human being as audience. An audience presumes a concern for community and for communication, and many writers have written of the disintegration of the concept of community during the last half of the 20th century. The danger, of course, is that the concept of community will eventually drop from our vocabulary and it will altogether vanish from our consciousness. Moreover recent disasters have shown the extreme fragility of the fabric of community in urban areas. As human beings we all need community, real community, and it is far too important a concept to be allowed to disappear.

Sometimes, as contemporary poets, we seem to have lost our sense of audience and believe that if a reader doesn't understand our poetry, that is not our problem; we have done our part. Sometimes it seems as if aspiring poets believe that writing poetry frees them from the need to communicate.

Writing poetry is serious work and does not free anyone to be a bad writer. As writers, we all need community, real community, to keep us honest and to keep us truly communicating with other human beings. Sometimes we refer to virtual (almost, but not quite) reality and at times we seem unable to distinguish it from genuine reality. As writers, and perhaps especially as poets, we need to reclaim our local communities as the source of our audience and our touchstone for authentic communication. Without a real audience, so much that tries to pass as poetry degenerates into cutesy-pie word-play or incoherent, meaningless babble. How about considering the following:

And let us never forget William Faulkner's 1949 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech in which he eloquently states the reasons why poetry is so important:

Finally, having said all this, I must commend those poets I have selected as my top three choices and honorable mention recipients. Their poetry ranges from traditional forms to free verse, but all of it is thoughtfully developed and carefully crafted. I have reread all of these poems dozens of times and they remain new and fresh with each reading-a hallmark, I believe, of good writing. Bravo! And thank you.