The Fifth Daily Poem Project, Week Three Results

THE FIFTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK THREE RESULTS

The winner of the third week of my fifth Daily Poem Project is David Bottoms, A Chat with My Father, which received 11 votes out of 31 cast.

That makes "A Chat With My Father" the clearest winner yet in the fifth DPP, as second place went to D. A. Powell, corydon & alexis, with 7 votes. In third was Rae Armantrout, Dark Matter, with five votes. Three other poems had eight votes between them, and for the first time in this DPP, a poem received no votes.

My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week four on Sunday morning, March 15.

The winner of week one was Sherod Santos, Film Noir.
The winner of week two was Edward Field, Cataract op.

The Fifth Daily Poem Project, Week Three Call for Votes

THE FIFTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK THREE

Here are the poems to vote for in the third week of the fifth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, March 2, to Sunday, March 8):

March 2: Emma Neale, Farewell Do
March 3: Sarah Barber, To a Ring I Lost Planting Bulbs
March 4: D. A. Powell, corydon & alexis (vote only on the first poem)
March 5: Rae Armantrout, Dark Matter
March 6: David Bottoms, A Chat with My Father
March 7: Keith Ratzlaff, The Struggle between Plenty and Thankfulness
March 8: Greg Wrenn, Pontiff

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 on my blog). 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 FRIDAY, MARCH 13! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results. (March 15 at the latest.)

The winner of week one was Sherod Santos, Film Noir.
The winner of week two was Edward Field, Cataract op.

(And one other thing to add: feel free to pass the call for votes on to anyone you know who might be interested!)

Sitting at Home Minding My Own Business

In his "Manifesto of the Flying Mallet" in the Feb. 2009 issue of Poetry, Michael Hofmann writes:

[Poetry's] only cavalry is the reader, and there’s only one of him or her, sitting at home minding his or her own business, without a horse to hand, or a thought of you.

Which reminds me of the end of Kafka's "A Message from the Emperor," as Hofmann calls the story in his translation:

No one can make his way through there, much less with a message from a dead man. — But you, you will sit at your window and dream of it, as evening falls.

[And as I type in this little note I wrote the other day, this comes to mind.]

*

In the "Eight Manifestos" in that issue of Poetry (of which Hofmann's is one), I also particularly enjoyed those by Charles Bernstein, A. E. Stallings, and D. A. Powell. Here are two good bits from Powell's:

But most of what makes a school truly interesting is what others say about it; not what it says about itself.

They [artists] want to belong to the outside, and yet to be recognized by the inside.

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

DPP3 voting

Just a note to mention that the voting is still open for week 3 of my Daily Poem Project. The poems in question are here:

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! (BUT I WILL PROBABLY ONLY FINISHING TALLYING THE VOTES SOMETIME FRIDAY.)

Results of previous weeks:
Week One
Week Two

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