The Commuter Challenge

This month we’re doing slant rhyme movie poems. The poem itself can be as long or as short as you like, but it must contain more slant rhymes than regular rhymes, and you should strive to use slant rhymes exclusively. Extra credit for using one or more unforgivably egregious slant rhymes, like rhyming lion with motion, or rough with bough. As an added constraint, the poem should reference a movie (any movie). Whether the poem is entirely about a movie or merely contains a fleeting reference to a movie is up to your discretion.

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This website contains entries to all previous Commuter Challenges. From this diverse collection, select an illustration, poem, or prose writing — just about anything that has been submitted to the Commuter Challenge by someone other than yourself. If you selected a text entry, then create an illustration for it; on the other hand, if you selected an illustration, write a poem or an appropriate bit of prose to accompany it.

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Create an original nonsense poem, or nonsense-ish poem. Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” or e. e. cummings’s “the way to hump a cow is not” are both good examples of the genre and its potential range. Twelve lines is the minimum. (There is no maximum.) No fair writing random nonsense, however: Like Humpty Dumpty, you should be able to completely explain what your poem means. (Though like any canny artist, you should probably refrain from actually doing so.) One final requirement: your poem should include, however fleeting, a reference to a towel — preferably without explicitly mentioning it, but we’ll leave this to your artistic discretion.

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Create an original piece of 2-dimensional art and use it as a postcard. It can be no larger than 6 inches long by 4¼ inches high by .016 inch thick. At least one side must have an original handmade artwork (painting, illustration, collage, etc), and the other side must have a legible address, a message to the recipient, and a 28-cent US stamp (or combination of stamps adding up to 28 cents). Scan your creation for submission to the Commuter Challenge, and then you must actually mail the postcard. If appropriate, in the interest of privacy concerns, you may address the postcard after scanning it, or obscure the address on the scan prior to submission (probably a good idea if it’s the address of a friend or family member, but not necessary if the address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue). As a further constraint, since February 3, 2011 is the start of the Year of the Rabbit in the Chinese Zodiac calendar, the submission must somehow include, incorporate, or make reference to a rabbit.

Please note: avoid any three-dimensional elements (origami folds, loose collage edges, wax seal with signet ring impression), as they would most likely get stripped off when the postcard goes through the post office mail processing machinery.

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This month’s Commuter Challenge returns to sonnets. But sonnets as they stand are much too free-form, so for a proper challenge, all the words in your sonnet must begin with the same letter of the alphabet. The choice of which letter to use is up to you.

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Create a piece of artwork no larger than one inch on a side. There’s no restriction as to subject matter or medium, with the exception that you must draw everything by hand yourself. Using computer hardware to shrink things down is strictly forbidden.

If you prefer sculpture to drawing, feel free to submit a cubic-inch-sized work of art instead.

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The beginning of a new year is traditionally a time for fresh starts, so we’ve decided to make the first Commuter Challenge of 2010 “Amnesty Month”. For this month, return to a previous Commuter Challenge for which you failed to make a submission, and make one now. Whether it was because you didn’t finish before the deadline, or had a great idea but just never made the time to follow up on it, or because you just didn’t have any great ideas until you saw everyone else’s submissions (after which you were kicking yourself) — it doesn’t matter. This is your opportunity to redress the challenge of your choice.

Include with your submission a short essay explaining why you didn’t finish it before, and what’s changed since then. If the truth is too boring to fill even a short essay, feel free to embellish.

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Create a dust jacket for one of your favorite books. No restriction on the kind of book (fiction, nonfiction, other) or the type of illustration, other than it be created by you.

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Write a set of three double dactyls. (Consult Wikipedia for a concise explanation of the constraints of the double dactyl.) You can pick anyone and anything for your subjects. However, what you do not get to choose are the single-word lines. Instead, you must use the words in this list:

• Organizational
• Sentimentality
• Unsatisfactory

Use each one only once per poem.

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This month’s challenge is: Sonnetfight!

Throughout the month of October, we will follow the challenges on songfight.org, but instead of recording songs we’ll be writing sonnets.

If you’re unfamiliar with songfight, how it works is simple. Periodically a song title is posted to the website. During the next week anyone can compose, record, and submit an original song with the given title. All the submissions are then posted to the website, and voted on to determine the winner.

We’ll be skipping over the voting part of the process, but otherwise we’ll be following their lead. When a new title and deadline is posted, you have that much time to submit a sonnet with the given title. All entries will be posted to our website immediately following the deadline.

Sonnet Fights

• Due October 5th: “Ring Them Bells” [optional warm-up round]
• Due October 15th: “Monkeys on my Back”
• Due October 25th: “Who Needs Sleep”
• Due October 31st: “Welcome Home, Frank”

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The Commuter Challenge awakes from hibernation with a simple task: Create a crossword puzzle. There are no requirements other than to conform to the standard requirements of (American) crossword puzzles. (Consult http://barelybad.com/xwdrulesreal.htm for an overview of the requirements.)

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Edit: The Commuter Challenge for this month was cancelled after the fact due to lack of participation. The Commuter Challenges went into hibernation from January to August 2009, to be resumed in September.

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