The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Six Call for Votes

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK SIX

Here are the poems to vote for in the sixth week of the sixth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, April 5, to Sunday, April 11):

April 11: A Fisheries Scientist And His Father, The Preacher, Gather Salmon , by Peter Munro
April 10: The Burthen of the Mystery Indeed, by Maurice Manning
April 9: Returning to the Land of 1,000 Dances, by Sandra Beasley
April 8: Fifth Avenue in Early Spring, by Philip Schultz (vote only on the first poem)
April 7: The Hereafter, by Andrew Hudgins
April 6: Winter's Tale, by Maxine Kumin
April 5: The Rain at Sea, by Don Paterson

HOW TO VOTE: You can send your vote to me by email or as a comment on the blog (or as a comment to my Facebook link to this call for votes). 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). If you want to vote anonymously, that's okay, but please choose some sort of pseudonym so I can keep track of different votes by anonymous voters. 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 SATURDAY, APRIL 17! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results (which I will do by Sunday, April 18, at the latest).

Feel free to pass on this call for votes to anyone who might be interested!

The winner of week one was Trick, by Sam Willetts.
The winner of week two was Ecclesiastes, by Khaled Mattawa.
The winner of week three was To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor’s Garage, by Eduardo C. Corral.
The winner of week four was In the Men's Room at the Café Provence, by F. D. Reeve.
The winner of week five was The Bus Driver, by Hédi Kaddour, tr. Marilyn Hacker.

Where Sadness Comes From

One of the finalists from my Daily Poem Project last spring and summer, Maurice Manning's "Where Sadness Comes From," is discussed in Peter Campion's essay on sincerity in the February 08 issue of Poetry.

I'm not quite sure I follow Campion's essay as a whole (perhaps I don't understand his motivation for writing it; that seems to be an issue for me these days), but his reading of Manning's poem is quite well done, as is his discussion of Elizabeth Arnold's "Civilization."

By the way, I'll be starting a new Daily Poem Project in a week; the first call for votes will cover the Poetry Daily poems from Monday, February 18, to Sunday, February 24.

Yet another post from Todtnauberg. :-)

DPP12 results

Here are the results of week 12 of the Daily Poem Project. Once again, the bloggers and the class have agreed on a winner, though again with extremely close votes in both cases.

In the class, 14 votes were cast, and every poem received at least one vote. The winner, with 4 votes, was Bucolics III, by Maurice Manning, with What Knits, by Paul Celan, trans. Ian Fairley, in second place with 3 votes.

10 votes were cast in the blog vote, and again every poem received at least one vote—with the same results: Bucolics III, by Maurice Manning, won with 3 votes, and What Knits, by Paul Celan, trans. Ian Fairley, was in second place with 2 votes.

I found most of the poems this week compelling in one way or another. Ordinarily, I would rank any poem by Paul Celan ahead of just about any other poem. Further, I wanted to judge this translation on its own terms as an English poem. But on those terms, I found it wanting, and several infelicities of phrasing led me to look at the German original, where I noticed a few choices that I found ... well, wrong, if I may put it that way. "Was näht" does not mean "what knits" but "what sews," for example.

As I read through the other poems, I kept coming back to Manning's "Bucolics" because of the rhythm, so I ended up deciding to vote for it. (Manning thus becomes the first poet to ever win two weeks in the same Daily Poem Project; he won back in week 7.)

Here are some of the comments from the call for votes:

Bruce Loebrich said...

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)

Felix said...

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.

Donald Brown said...

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.

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.

I'll be posting a call for votes for the final vote shortly.

DPP12

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.

DPP7 results

The results for week 7 are in, and for the second time the class and the bloggers have come up with the same result: Maurice Manning's Where Sadness Comes From.

Only nine bloggers voted, with 3 votes going to Manning and 2 votes each to Seventy Faces, by Richard Chess, and The Vanishing Twin, by Sun Yung Shin. If you were one of those voters, thanks, oh loyal comrades! See if you can get some other folks to vote, too. :-)

Class did not meet this week because of the Ascension holiday yesterday (four-day weekend!), and only 11 votes were cast by class members (including my vote). Manning got four votes, with Chess in second with 3 and Sun Yung Shin in third with 2.

I voted for Manning's poem and was pleased to see it win both votes! :-) Several people thought it was a good week; I found myself attracted only to Manning's poem and Dear Blackbird,, by Jane Springer, but the latter worked for me only from its punchline conclusion, while Manning's worked for me all the way through.

My cousin Bruce Loebrich wrote:

45. Seventy Faces, by Richard Chess
46. Where Sadness Comes From, by Maurice Manning
47. Dear Blackbird,, by Jane Springer
48. The Vanishing Twin, by Sun Yung Shin
44. The Meat Thieves, by Susan Wicks
43. Central Canadian Verse, by George Bowering
49. Snow and Wind Canticle to an Unborn Child, by Greg Delanty

Loyal voter Don Brown gave us his usual thorough analysis:

I vote for #46, Maurice Manning. Manning is oddly, quirkily brilliant. I voted for his first book in the Yale Younger Poets Series, and I heard him read from it and his second book. The poem here isn't as amazing as other things I've heard him read, but it sneaks up on you. The voice is so simply declarative but is speaking of something quite ominous.

The other poems this week left me cold. The first one (#43, Bowering, "Central Canadian") was amusing, sorta. The last one (#49, Delanty, "Snow Canticle") was very sentimental. There were a few good lines in Springer's "Blackbird" (#47), but it struck me as silly. The poem by Rick Chess (who I remember from ages ago in Jersey) simply overdoes what could've been a striking poem; the good parts, for me, get buried in the excess (#45, "Seventy Faces"). #44 "Meat Thieves," by Susan Wick is well written but not my cup of meat (neither are dancing kings or making haste). Finally, #48, Sun Yung Shin, "Twin"; yeah, ok, whatever, the "sane went insane" stanza strikes me as very trite.

See the list of the winners from the first six weeks in the post with the results of week six.

Results of previous weeks:
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Week Six

Poetry magazine, May 2007

Along with the call for submissions from those who have not been published in the magazine before, the May 2007 issue of Poetry has some fascinating things in it. It starts off with a bang with two poems by Bob Hicok, including the splendid "O my pa-pa." Susan Stewart contributes the sonnet "A Boy's Voice," and Maurice Manning's "A Blasphemy" is also quite strong, and is followed by two poems about sleepless nights with a small child by my friend Geoffrey Brock.

Then there's Michael Hofmann's review of the new Collected Poems of Zbigniew Herbert. I said there are fascinating things in the magazine, and this review is fascinating—not because of what it says about Herbert (we all know he's a great poet, don't we?) or what it says about the history of Herbert translation into English (although it's kind of interesting to find out that the previous translators have not done this book because of conflicts with Herbert's widow) or even what it says about the new translations (according to Hofmann, "Alissa Valles's Herbert is slack, chattersome, hysterical, full of exaggeration, complacency, and reaching for effect").

No, it's fascinating to watch Hofmann write a review that most people will remember because of what it reveals about the reviewer himself. As I'm not reviewing his review, I don't have to provide a list of adjectives like those Hofmann uses to dismantle Valles. I'll let you decide.

DPP7

THE DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK SEVEN

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

43. Central Canadian Verse, by George Bowering
44. The Meat Thieves, by Susan Wicks
45. Seventy Faces, by Richard Chess
46. Where Sadness Comes From, by Maurice Manning
47. Dear Blackbird,, by Jane Springer
48. The Vanishing Twin, by Sun Yung Shin
49. Snow and Wind Canticle to an Unborn Child, by Greg Delanty

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 above! Please make a final decision and vote for only one poem! Please VOTE BY THURSDAY, MAY 17!

Abstaining: If you read the poems but decide that there is no poem that you want to vote for, I would be interested to know that you decided to abstain.

The results of previous weeks are summarized in the post about the week 6 results.