The Fourth Daily Poem Project Week 8 call for votes

THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK EIGHT

Here are the poems to vote for in week eight of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, April 7, to Sunday, April 13):

50. First Snowfall, by Jon Pineda (vote only on the first poem)
51. Atlas, by Fady Joudah (vote only on the first poem)
52. Elegy, by Elise Partridge (vote only on the first poem)
53. In a Little Apartment, by Adam Zagajewski, tr. Clare Cavanagh (vote only on the first poem)
54. Embarrassment, by Brenda Shaughnessy
55. Cairo, NY, by Cornelius Eady
56. September, by August Kleinzahler

This is the eight week of twelve weeks, at the end of which the twelve winners will be put together for a final vote.

HOW TO VOTE: 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). (If you read this on Facebook, please vote on my blog and not as a comment on Facebook.) I will post comments as they come in (unless you tell me not to post the comment, of course).

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 SATURDAY, April 18! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which I will do on April 19. If you would like to receive an email announcing the posting of the results, make sure to get me your email address somehow (if it is not available through your blogger profile or the like, say).

The winner of week 1 was Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter."
The winner of week 2 was Martha Zweig's "Overturn."
The winner of week 3 was B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo."
The winner of week 4 was Damian Walford Davies's "Plague."
The winner of week 5 was Mary Jo Salter's "Point of View."
The winner of week 6 was Bill Zavatsky's "Ode to the Maker of Odes."
The winner of week 7 was Marie Howe's "The Star Market."

Everwine; Idling

I liked this poem, "Aubade in Autumn," by Peter Everwine, in the October 15, 2007, issue of The New Yorker. They've got something going about handymen right now (as with Cornelius Eady's "Handymen"). Alice Quinn's farewell theme? :-)

*

The same issue contained a "Talk of the Town" item about letting your car idle, "Idle Hands." It includes a reference to car-engine idling in Switzerland (or the supposed lack thereof):

'“In Switzerland you have to turn your engine off if you’re more than four cars behind the stoplight,” Rebecca Kalin, the group’s founder, said the other day. “Idling is rude there. It’s like burping—you just don’t do it.”'

Well, actually, idling is not illegal in Basel-Stadt, the canton I live in. But it is in Geneva, which is why Irène Jacob turns off her car at the stoplight in Kieslowski's "Red."

But I turn off the car whenever I am at a stoplight. For reasons, check here and here and here. And before you say, "But you should only turn it off if you are going to be idling for ten seconds or more," here's my response to that: I might have the engine off for less than 10 seconds once in a while, but considering how often I am at a stoplight for a minute or two, my turnoff time averages to well over 10 seconds per time I turn my engine off.

Adam and Eady

A few weeks ago I commented on a funny little poem by Les Murray in the New Yorker, as well as on the other poem in the same issue, by Joni Mitchell (!).

I just saw the links for the two poems in the latest issue, so I thought I would check them out to see if the current issue looks any better, poem-wise.

One is by Adam Zagajewski, "Karmelicka" (translated by Clare Cavanagh); the other is by Cornelius Eady, "Handymen."

A much better pair (though still not brilliant) than the quite funny but quite flimsy Murray poem and the lyric by Joni.

By the way, the issue is, as far as I know, still under the aegis of poetry editor Alice Quinn (and not yet a playground for Paul Muldoon).