Turn Your Poem into a Bed & 3 Dozen Roses

SPRING LYRIC CONTEST on A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION

A note from Garrison:
"Sumer is icumen in," but first spring is icumen in and the song of the lhude cuccu will be heard here on the frozen tundra and the Norwegian bachelor farmers will strip the long underwear from themselves like bark and take their first bath of the year and the crocus and tulip will poke up and why not have a poetry contest to celebrate?

So we will, on March 31, conduct our Lhude Sing Cuccu contest and present the best of your poems and lyrics on A Prairie Home Companion to compete for lovely prizes.

And the first prize — from Select Comfort — will be a Queen-sized Sleep Number 5000 bed (with foundation legs) along with three dozen roses — a bed of roses delivered to your door — a renaissance in your domestic life — a source of untold joy, not to mention untold sleep.

Shakespeare wrote about spring ("Hey nonny nonny no") and so did George Herbert ("grief melts away as snow in May") and Gerard Manley Hopkins ("What is all this juice and all this joy?") and E. E. Cummings ("wholly to be a fool while spring is in the world, my blood approves") and A.E. Housman ("Loveliest of trees the cherry now is hung with bloom along the bough"). Robert Browning wrote, "O to be in England now that April's there" and Chaucer began "Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote" and Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, "How do I sleep with thee? Let me number the ways. O comfort that I didst select when I selected thee!"

Keats wrote an ode to spring and now is your chance. So start now. Take up pen, or sit down at the keyboard, or brood at the window, and contemplate spring and warmth and the growing season and romance and the end of the school year — whatever bursts your bulbs — and write your poem.

Minimum: fourteen lines. Must contain reference to spring. Must be original. Must be submitted by March 28 at midnight Central Standard Time. If you've submitted work in the past to First Person or Department of Folksong, please resubmit your work to be considered for the prize.


When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
And buried in snow up to your eyes and noses
Why not write a spring poem and win first prize,
A Sleep Number bed that is strewn with roses?




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