Sunday, May 30, 2010

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Final Round call for votes

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, FINAL ROUND

Here are the poems to vote for in the final round of the sixth Daily Poem Project. They are the winners of the twelve rounds from Monday, March 1, to Sunday, May 23 (each week's poems being those that appeared on Poetry Daily that week).

1. Trick, by Sam Willetts.
2. Ecclesiastes, by Khaled Mattawa.
3. To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor’s Garage, by Eduardo C. Corral.
4. In the Men's Room at the Café Provence, by F. D. Reeve.
5. The Bus Driver, by Hédi Kaddour, tr. Marilyn Hacker.
6. Winter's Tale, by Maxine Kumin.
7. H1N1, by Robyn Schiff.
8. Montana Sky, by Don Welch.
9. Arcadian, by Dan Beachy-Quick.
10. War Stories, by Charles Bernstein.
11. With God in the Morning, by Aliki Barnstone.
12. Adjectives of Order, by Alexandra Teague

HOW TO VOTE: You can send your vote to me by email or as a comment on the blog (or as a comment to my Facebook link to this call for votes). If you want to vote by commenting but do not want your vote to appear on the blog, you just have to say so in your comment (I moderate all comments on my blog). If you want to vote anonymously, that's okay, but please choose some sort of pseudonym so I can keep track of different votes by anonymous voters. I will post comments as they come in.

Please make a final decision and vote for only one poem (although it is always interesting to see people's lists).

Please VOTE BY SATURDAY, JUNE 5! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results.

Feel free to pass on this call for votes to anyone who might be interested!

17 comments:

Arnaud said...

Ecclesiastes, by Khaled Mattawa.

Annie said...

Ecclesiastes, by Khaled Mattawa.

Todd Finlay said...

I vote for Adjectives of Order, by Alexandra Teague

Donald Brown said...

Ecclesiastes, runner-up Trick.

Kelli Russell Agodon - Book of Kells said...

Eduardo Corral. Thanks!

hebegeebee said...

Adjectives of Order, by Teague

Patrick said...

Ecclesiastes! By light years...

Jane Holland said...

The Bus Driver by Hedi Kaddour, tr. M. Hacker.

A beautiful and very human poem.

l_m said...

Trick.

Anja said...

First Winter's Tale

then The Bus Driver

Matt Merritt said...

Ecclesiastes first, with The Bus Driver a close second.

Padraig Rooney said...

Adjectives of Order...some of those poems were soooo long!

Ivy said...

To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor’s Garage, by Eduardo C. Corral

followed by

Winter's Tale, by Maxine Kumin

Marion McCready said...

Trick, with Ecclesiastes close behind

Mark Granier said...

I vote for Winter's Tale by Maxine Kumin.

I also liked With God in the Morning by Aliki Barnstone, and The Bus Driver by Hédi Kaddour. As Jane said of the latter, it is very human. Reminded me of Gunter Grass's little poem 'Happiness':
An empty bus
hurtles through the starry night.
Perhaps the driver is singing
and is happy because he sings.'

As Padraig Rooney said, some of these were very loooong. But it wasn't the length I minded, so much as the sameness, as in Bernstein's 'War Stories', whose parallelism could have done with some serious editing.

So many voted for Ecclesiastes that I read it again, and again. Maybe I am missing something. I prefer Derek Mahon's poem (with the same title), published in one of his early books. Acerbic, like Mattawa's, but very different.

Andrew Shields said...

For me, it comes down to Willetts, Kaddour, Kumin, Barnstone, and Teague.

I'll settle on Teague's "Adjectives of Order," as I admire poems that link the orders of language and of the real world so tightly.

Mattawa's "Ecclesiastes" has a magical sound and feel, but remains too obscure to me. Corral'" "To a Jornalero" has some nice material but feels as if it has not been completely developed.

Anonymous said...

Caroline Whitbeck Says:

War Stories! It is always Charles, Charles, and Charles. I am in awe of him. A wonderful poet, teacher, and man.