THE DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK TWELVE
Here are the poems to vote for in week twelve, the final week of my Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, June 11, to Sunday, June 17):
78. Two Poems, by Tessa Rumsey (vote for both poems as a unit)
79. Don't Write History as Poetry, by Mahmoud Darwish, trans. Fady Joudah
80. What Knits, by Paul Celan, trans. Ian Fairley
81. Bucolics III, by Maurice Manning (only the first poem)
82. Lightfall, by Pamela Alexander
83. Ars Poetica, by Henrietta Goodman
84. Tobacco, by Peg Boyers
This is the last week of the Project. When I post the results of this week, I will also post a call for votes to pick the final winner. That post will, of course, include a linked list of all the finalists.
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). You may vote by the title, the author's name, or the number of the poem in the list above. Please make a final decision and vote for only one poem (although it is always interesting to see people's lists).
Please VOTE BY THURSDAY, JUNE 21! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which might only be on June 22 or 23.
If you want to receive an email announcing the results, send me your email address with your vote (if you have a public blogger profile, I can usually find it).
Week 11 results are here. Week 10 results are here. A summary of the results of the first nine weeks is at the end of the week 9 results.
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4 comments:
Hi! Darwish gets my vote everytime. - Cyril Wong
Here's my ranked list (my favorite is at the top):
82. Lightfall, by Pamela Alexander
78. Two Poems, by Tessa Rumsey (vote for both poems as a unit)
80. What Knits, by Paul Celan, trans. Ian Fairley
79. Don't Write History as Poetry, by Mahmoud Darwish, trans. Fady Joudah
83. Ars Poetica, by Henrietta Goodman
84. Tobacco, by Peg Boyers
81. Bucolics III, by Maurice Manning (only the first poem)
My vote goes to Ian Fairley's translation of "Was näht". 36 years after its publication, Celan's posthumous volume of poems, _Schneepart_, certainly one of the major works of twentieth century poetry, has finally been translated into English. Of course, no translation can ever be definitive; but every translation adds a reading--a voice--to the poem.
I can't say I'm partial to any of the selections this week. The winner is no doubt Celan in German, but then I can't read the poem in Arabic, so...no fair. In fact, though being a translator you might not like it, I can't really rank the translations with the others. The poem from Arabic reads in English like lines lifted from someone's notebook. And Celan in English is dull, not at all charming and not nearly so winningly enigmatic. So I don't really want to include either of those poems in my vote. That leaves those written in English, and I'll pick Manning again. I like some, not all, of his "Bucolics" I've heard or read -- the first one here is a pretty good one. There are better ones than any of these three. So, #81 wins, for me. The Rumsey poem (#78) mostly annoys me -- it has some good moments but I think it plays around too much in the early going. Boyers (#84) seems to me a "stop and start" poem. Little narrative bits with little lyrical throwaways; the apostrophe to the uncle at the end breaks into a new tone in what seems a gauche way to me. #82, Alexander's, "stops and starts" too, but I like it better (rank it 2nd), especially the part "I longed to be among trees." And the last two lines bring a nice close to it. Goodman (#83) lets me into a little claustrophobic moment but that's about it. It's a bit of the dark Lowellian confessional mode that can be pretty effective, but for some reason I don't believe its pathos, don't find it affecting.
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