The SLAM! Green Room

Thank you so much for the websites with grids, definitions, history, advice, and clarifications about the pantoum. Since the longer article does mention and encourage some variation, but not so much that it intrudes on the integrity of the form, I do need to ask if some variation will be allowed. For instance:

1) Is it equally to OK to flip or not flip the concluding lines of the pantoum? In some pantoums, the closing line is the same as the opening line. In others, the order of repetition in other stanzas is not altered, and the last stanza repeats without reversing those 2 lines from stanza one. Is either choice OK with you 3 judges?

2) Are homonyms (aka homophones) and puns OK in the repetons (as the one website suggests)? As this came up before with the sestina, I mention it here, esp. because the website demonstrates and discusses it.

3) I assume, likewise, that grammatical variation is fine.

4) Many modern pantoums do change the wording, even substituting phrases, in the repeated lines. Will that be tolerated? The ones I have seen preserve close repetition at the end of the line, even if they include a bold variation at the beginning of the repeton.

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