Prose and Poetry Frequently Asked Questions

*Important Note: In any question of procedure or documentation, the Constitution and Contest Rules should be consulted.

Internet and E-mail Documentation

Q: Is email or information secured from the Internet an acceptable form of documentation?
A: Students are allowed to access the Internet to locate documentation. As long as the site they have downloaded the information from is a legitimate one, it is acceptable to offer as documentation. (The obvious ones are encyclopedias such as Encarta.) Many contemporary authors today have their own website, and information from these are acceptable, since they are copyrighted to the author, as is information students download from a publishing company’s website. However, be careful of personal websites that are not copyrighted. These do not provide acceptable documentation.

Acceptable Internet sites include those run by:

• Government Agencies
• College/University pages that are maintained by faculty and university department personnel, not students
• Online encyclopedias
• Book Publishers
• Online libraries maintained by government agencies, colleges, universities

Unacceptable Internet site:

• Wikipedia

If an online data service is used for documentation, the source of the published material should be included.

Many students are now receiving email direct from the authors themselves. Email is acceptable as long as it provides sufficient information to legitimize it as being received from a proper source. If the email address does not indicate the legitimate source (such as Scholastic Publishing), it is preferable for students to request from the respondent that they include their title/position and contact information. Note: The respondent should be instructed to copy the original request for information onto their response so the particular request can be verified.

Letterhead Stationary Documentation

Q: Is a letter from the publisher/author on letterhead stationery acceptable?
A: Yes. The letter should be formal and on official stationery, not handwritten on plain paper.

Written Documentation

Q: What does the Constitution and Contest Rules mean by “written documentation”? May I hand copy or type my documentation?
A: No. Documentation should be provided from its original source, either photocopied or downloaded and printed electronically. Students may not create their own original documentation.

Published

Q: In order to prove a selection is published, printed material and Internet material has been printed in hard copy as well as being on the Internet, may we use Library of Congress cataloguing information?
A: Yes. Students may research a book by accessing the Library of Congress Online Catalog. If the book is listed there, you may download and print the cataloguing information in order to serve as proof the work is published in hard copy.

Special Collections

Q: My students enjoy the Chicken Soup for the Souls series. Can these be used for the Prose contest?
A: It is strongly recommended students not use selections from the Chicken Soup series. They are problematic and usually result in disqualification due to incomplete documentation. Documenting the stories proves very difficult. Many times the individual attributed to a particular story in the collection is only a contributor and not the original author. Finding proof of original authorship will require a student and coach to obtain confirmation from the publisher. Again, we recommend students not use this series.

Same Selection

Q: Can you explain the rule concerning using the same selection I’ve already used in UIL competition?
A: Contestants may not use the same literary work more than one year at UIL State Meet. See further discussion on this issue just prior to the Questions & Answers section.

Prose Poetry

Q: I’ve found literature which is referred to on the book jacket as a prose poem. Should it be used in the prose contest or in the poetry contest? Where would it fit?
A: A Handbook to Literature, 8th edition, Harmon and Holman discusses this “modern phenomenon” and indicates that “some writers and critics argue that the prose poem doesn’t really exist.” “It may be that prose poem is a graphic or print category determined, finally, by how a piece is laid out in print.” Literature scholar Lawrence Perrine indicates in Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense that a prose poem is “usually a short composition having the intentions of poetry but written in prose rather than verse.”

Because this is a competitive situation, contestants should use contest material which clearly can be determined as prose or poetry. The risk of controversy or disqualification is not worth it. Literature which clearly fits the genre categories abounds and makes it unnecessary to risk using literature which creates a genre blur.

One Poem or Two

Q: Is poetry which includes stanzas divided by Roman numerals but not individual titles considered one poem or multiple poems?
A: Poetry that has one title but Roman numerals between stanzas is one poem. The divisions are called cantos. A Handbook to Literature defines a canto as a section or division of a long peom. Derived from the Latin cantus (SONG), the word originally signified a section of a narrative poem of such length as to be sung by a minstrel in one singing. The books of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage are divided into cantos. Early in this century, Ezra Pound published pieces at first called “cantos of a poem of some length” and eventually called that poem simply The Cantos. Contemporary examples include: The People, Yes by Carl Sandburg and Rage by Lesléa Newman.

Specific Writers and Books

The literary works Out of the Dust and Witness authored by Karen Hesse, Scholastic Press, are poetry. The literary works by Sonya Sones, “One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies,” “Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy” and “What My Mother Doesn’t Know” are poetry. The Realm of Possibility by David Levithan is poetry, with the exception of the piece, “Writing."

Def Poetry jam on Broadway...and More is tricky. The book has a table of contents that is divided into two parts: Part One and Part Two. These are two separate parts of the book with two different title pages.

Part I has been ruled by UIL to be performance literature and therefore is ineligible for competition. It is a Broadway show that has won a Tony Award for “best Special Theatrical Event” and the Peabody Award. The manuscript includes stage directions. UIL will allow poems in Part II at the back of the book, the “...and More” to be used in competition, as they were not included in the Broadway6 show and many have been published stand alone in poetry anthologies.

If you wish to use poems from the publication, be certain you understand the ruling and have selected poems declared eligible.

More Questions

See the web site for official rulings on specific literary works and for additional questions and answers to be added throughout the year.