Monday, April 16, 2007

DPP3

THE DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK THREE

Here are the poems to vote for in week two of my Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, April 9, to Sunday, April 15):

15. Henri Cole, "Gravity and Center"
16. Carl Dennis, "Birthday"
17. Jessica Fisher, "The Promise of Nostos"
18. Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, "Suddenly in Grace"
19. D. A. Powell, "Sprig of Lilac"
20. Josephine Dickinson, "The Bargain"
21. Matt Donovan, "Saint Catherine in an O: A Song about Knives"

The Rules:

You can send your vote to me by email or as a comment on the blog. 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). In any case, I will not post the comments until after the final vote is in (secret ballot). Please vote by the number of the poem in the list below! Please make a final decision and vote for only one poem! Please VOTE BY THURSDAY, APRIL 19!

(If you are planning to keep voting uring the rest of the project, then you can always read the poems each day they appear!)

Results of previous weeks:
Week One
Week Two

3 comments:

Bruce Loebrich said...

Here's my ranked list (my favorite is at the top):

17. Jessica Fisher, "The Promise of Nostos"
19. D. A. Powell, "Sprig of Lilac"
16. Carl Dennis, "Birthday"
20. Josephine Dickinson, "The Bargain"
18. Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, "Suddenly in Grace"
21. Matt Donovan, "Saint Catherine in an O: A Song about Knives"
15. Henri Cole, "Gravity and Center"

Jonathan said...

I vote for Jessica Fisher. It's a nice little well-made New Yorker poem. Henri Cole's is the worst. D.A. Powell is guilty of some over-writing.

Unknown said...

My vote goes to "The Promise of Nostos". Jessica Fisher's variation on a theme from the odyssey--the figure of leaving and returning as a central element of the occidental unconscious--chooses, as Baudelaire in "Le voyage", to distrust the possibility of "nostos," of returning back home. But she changes the perspective from the first person plural (Baudelaire: "Un matin nous partons") to a persona who observes the third person plural ("They do not leave to return"). Leaving and returning are also an allegory of writing (leaving: beginning of the text; returning: finding a well-balanced ending). Therefore, the dash, which ends the poem without really ending it, perfoms the delayed return on a textual level.