Friday, April 20, 2007

DPP3 results

This morning, the class voted on this week's poems. It was a close vote, with the winner receiving 4 votes and 3 poems receiving three:

4 votes:
20. Josephine Dickinson, "The Bargain"

3 votes:
17. Jessica Fisher, "The Promise of Nostos"
19. D. A. Powell, "Sprig of Lilac"
21. Matt Donovan, "Saint Catherine in an O: A Song about Knives"

I voted for Donovan's poem and was quite surprised that Dickinson won. Still, my reason for disliking the poem was perhaps quite technical; I found (and still find) the third line too hard to parse:

and you think not I might not hear you go

Donovan's poem had also not excited me at first, but on a third reading (it took that long), the poem's densities and layerings began to open up for me, to the point where it overwhelmed the other poems, even D. A. Powell's wondrously beautiful "Sprig of Lilac."

The blog voters were of one mind this time: nine votes received, five of them for Fisher's
"The Promise of Nostos." I was quite surprised by this, as I had not given Fisher's poem much of a reading, but the enthusiastic comments I received on the poem sent me back to it, and I have to agree, there's a lot more there than I thought at a third reading. :-)

I'll be posting a call for votes for week four on Monday; in the meantime, of course, you can already read the poems on Poetry Daily (the poems from April 16 to April 22).

Results of previous weeks:
Week One
Week Two

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