Round 1 Recap, Round 2 Underway + Ends Today!

Key stats and highlights from our first week back in action

This is our first — and due to time constraints, ultra-abbreviated — Madness! Poetry round recap and next round preview. Only for “More” subscribers (that’s you!).

In general, it’s been a great first week, both on the surface and behind the scenes. Given my near complete overhaul of the application over the last two years, we experienced very few technical difficulties for our first live run. The one challenge we did face was (and is) a lower-than-expected Student vote turnout. So please do share news of the event with the educators in your life so we can get more students excited about poetry! I even created a little badge that they can use to brag to their friends about how cool they are for bringing Madness! into their classrooms:

Anyways, on with the recap …

Round 1 Recap:

Key stats:

Total votes cast: 5,979 💪

Wackiest word prompt: “bivouac” 🤯

Closest match: Also, the battle of “bivouac” 🏁

• 48.4% Sarah Marhevsky vs.

• 51.6% Terri Cohlene

Biggest margin of victory: Kelly Conroy captured 89.4% of the vote with her poem “IMPETUOUS? NOT ME!” 🚀

Biggest upset: Newcomer Scott Thomson (16 seed) narrowly upsets former champion Lori Degman (1 seed) in this very close match featuring two terrific entries 😲

Round 2 Preview:

Well, it’s not much of a preview at this point since the round ends in about 6 hours BUT it’s an exciting round nonetheless. We have a fun set of words and an amazing slate of authletes who have moved into Round 2. The word list is:

• assuaged

• copacetic

• credo

• jejune

• yeets

• miasma

• neutralized

• nirvana

• obtrusive

• panacea

• protruding

• puerile

• pugnacious

• retrograde

• stultifying

• threadbare

What would YOU do with one of these words?

Round 2 voting ends Tuesday 7pm EDT. If you haven’t already, visit the match list (the matches at the top are in most need of votes) right now to read and vote for your favorite poems in each match! 🗳 x 16 = ❤️

See you next round …