Here are the results of the Writer’s Digest Poetic Form Challenge for the chanso along with a Top 10 list. You can check out all the chanso entries in the comments on this post.

Click here at any time to see what current WD Poetic Form Challenge we’re running. We’re currently running one for the kimo.

Here is the winning chanso:

“The Waking of a Tree,” by R. E. Wu

The woods were still in slumber
When I took a winter tryst,
With powder-dusted umber
Twining through the snowy mist
Of scattered snowflakes falling,
Falling slowly through their midst.

Above, the somber branches
Stretched and murmured, all a drowse
With pending avalanches
Clustered lace-like on their boughs
And speckled sunlight calling—
Calling for the trees to rouse.

I heard the cedars waken,
Watched their murmurs turn to moans
For stiffness wasn’t shaken
Yet from dormant winter bones—
Their creaking timbers sounding,
Sounding weary, wooden groans.

Then low beneath my awning
Shuddered with a chorused CRACK,
A thawing cedar yawning,
Stretching long her rigid back
Her pulsing heartbeats pounding,
Pounding, stretching, beating—THWACK.

I touched my chapping fingers
To her ochre overwood
(Where still the balsam lingers
Like the grove where cedars stood)
And listened to her speaking—
Speaking raptly, rapping wood.

Then on again I journeyed
Through the merry, chatting trees,
Between the timbers creaking,
Creaking warmly on the breeze.

*****

Play with poetic forms!

Poetic forms are fun poetic games, and this digital guide collects more than 100 poetic forms, including more established poetic forms (like sestinas and sonnets) and newer invented forms (like golden shovels and fibs).

Click to continue.

*****

Congratulations, R. E. Wu! I enjoyed listening to the chatting trees and that repetition of the word at the end of the penultimate line and the first word of the final line was divine.

Here’s my Top 10 list:

1. The Waking of a Tree, by R. E. Wu
2. The Literary Feud, by Tracy Davidson
3. If I Could, by Lelawattee Mano-Rahming
4. Homeward, by Sasha A. Palmer
5. Chance of Tomorrow, by Zev Lawson Edwards
6. A Bubbles Kind of Mood, by RJ Clarken
7. House of Open Doors, by Jane Shlensky
8. Cooperation, by Connie L Peters
9. Sunday Night, by Alex Jenkins
10. A Mother’s Advice, by Trudy Bosman

Congratulations to everyone in the Top 10! And to everyone who wrote a chanso!