What a Judge Sees in the First Thirty Seconds of Your Poem

A contest judge walks through the exact scan that happens in the first thirty seconds of reading an entry, the six things that make a poem survive it, and the four instant-downgrade signals that kill a submission before the second stanza.

Before I say this, one honest number: in a two-hundred-entry round, I read every poem to the end. But I decide whether it is a contender in the first thirty seconds, and I am right ninety times out of a hundred. That first scan is not lazy; it is the part of reading where everything a poem is going to do shows up early.

If you know what I am scanning for in that half-minute, you can stop losing contests in the opening stanza. Here is the exact sequence.

The thirty-second scan

Line one. I read the title and the first line together. The title should not repeat the first line, and the first line should not be a throat-clearing. "I want to tell you about" or "Let me explain" is a poem still knocking. A first line should already be doing something.

The first verb. Within the first three lines I look for the first strong verb. If the opening is all being-verbs and adjectives, was, is, beautiful, sad, the poem has not started moving yet. Movement is what I am looking for.

The first turn. By the end of the first stanza I need to feel the poem tilt. A question, a doubt, a specific image that is not the one the title predicted. If the first stanza is just the title said longer, I start skim-reading.

The surface. I check for typos, for a stanza that is visibly uneven where it should be even, for a rhyme that forced a bad word choice. These are the surface signals, and they tell me whether the poem has been read back to itself or written in one pass.

The six survival signals

These are the things that make me put a poem in the 'maybe' pile in the first thirty seconds.

1. A first line that is a detail, not a thesis. "The bus shelter had a name carved under the seat" beats "Life is hard and we are all alone." Detail opens a poem; thesis closes it.

2. A verb doing real work by line three. Not 'was' or 'had' or 'felt'. A verb with a body to it, carried, unspooled, cracked, held.

3. A turn inside the first stanza. The poem contradicts itself, or doubts itself, or turns the camera. Something that says the speaker is not just reciting.

4. A surface that was proofread. No typos in the first stanza. No forced rhyme. The poem has been read out loud at least once.

5. A voice that is one person. Not 'we' when the speaker means 'I', not a speaker who changes between stanzas. One consistent eye.

6. A shape that fits the subject. A short poem about a small thing, a long poem about a big one. Mismatched length is the first thing that feels off.

The four instant downgrades

These are the signals that put a poem in the 'no' pile before I reach the second stanza, and they are all avoidable.

1. A title that is the poem. "Grief" titled "Sadness," "Love" titled "I Love You." If the title just restates the poem, I already know there is nothing underneath.

2. An epigraph that explains the poem. A quote from Rilke or a scripture that tells me what to think before the poem starts. The poem should do the thinking; the epigraph is just borrowed authority.

3. A first stanza that is throat-clearing. Three lines of scene-setting before the poem actually begins. Cut the first stanza of a draft and the poem often improves on the spot.

4. A forced rhyme in the first four lines. 'love' and 'dove', 'heart' and 'apart'. If the rhyme is driving the word choice instead of the other way round, the poem is working for the form, not the subject.

Where poets waste the opening

The most common waste is the opening that explains itself. "This poem is about my grandmother who died last year" is not a first line; it is a caption. The reader does not need the setup; they need the poem. Start in the middle of the thing and let the reader catch up.

The second most common waste is the prologue stanza, the one that says what is coming. "I remember the day it happened" is a stanza that exists to tell you the poem is about to start. Delete it. The poem starts when the poem starts.

If you want a stronger opening, the editing checklist has the cut list I use on my own first stanzas, and the contest window is open when yours is ready. The first thirty seconds are not a scan for mistakes; they are a scan for a poem that knows it is one.

Keep reading

For the craft side, the contest-tips module covers the deeper method. The past winners is the page to read next, and the current window is where the work goes when it is done.

By Writory Editorial, for Writory.

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