Ed Frankel of Los Angeles, CA is the winner of the fifth annual War Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers. This contest seeks today's best poetry on the theme of war. Mr. Frankel's poems "Instrumentum Vocale" and "Gladium Vocale" were judged the best of 868 entries from around the world. The winning entries are published at WinningWriters.com.

Northampton, MA (PRWEB) November 15, 2006--Winning Writers is pleased to announce the results from its fifth annual War Poetry Contest. Ed Frankel of Los Angeles, CA won first prize and $1,500 for his poems "Instrumentum Vocale" and "Gladium Vocale", which dramatize episodes from Spartacus' slave rebellion against the Roman Empire in the first century BC.


868 entries of 1-3 poems each were received from around the world. They were judged by Jendi Reiter, award-winning author of A Talent for Sadness. Ms. Reiter comments, "The legend of Spartacus has long been a symbol of struggle against oppression. Frankel's taut, unsparing verses bring these characters to life amid a host of paradoxes. A 'just war' that is still brutal and marred by treachery; a war that (as always) dehumanizes the combatants, even as it gives an exploited people a fleeting, glorious opportunity to claim their birthright as human beings and not 'tools with a voice'; an honorable defeat that ultimately casts a longer shadow than any victory. The psychological realism of Frankel's characters brings out this story's universal aspects."

William Pitt Root of Bayfield, CO won second prize and $500 for "El Comandante Has Asked for a Song", a lyric poem about the assassination of Chilean poet, singer and activist Victor Jara under General Pinochet's dictatorship.

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