The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Two Results

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK TWO RESULTS

The winner of the second week of my sixth Daily Poem Project is Ecclesiastes, by Khaled Mattawa, which received 9 votes out of 26 cast.

In second place was Elegy, by Natasha Trethewey, with six votes. Every poem received at least one vote.

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

The winner of the first week was Trick, by Sam Willetts.

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Two Call for Votes

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK TWO

Here are the poems to vote for in the second week of the sixth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, March 8, to Sunday, March 14):

March 8: Black Mane, by Henri Cole (vote only on the first poem)
March 9: The Edges of Time, by Kay Ryan (vote only on the first poem)
March 10: Ecclesiastes, by Khaled Mattawa
March 11: In the Language of the Here and Now, by Leslie C. Chang
March 12: Elegy, by Natasha Trethewey
March 13: What the Stars Will Bring, by Greg Hewett
March 14: Devotion: Thirst Reduction, by Bruce Smith

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 FRIDAY, MARCH 19! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results. (March 21 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.

Poetry Bestsellers

C. Dale Young linked to this list of current bestsellers in poetry. I thought it would be interesting to edit the list as follows:

a) take out any dead poets (Bukowski, Plath, Larkin).

b) take out any poets who appear more than once (Collins, Oliver, Bukowski again, Berry).

The first bit of editing seems to go without saying. The second is less clear, but perhaps it's like taking Rowling off the bestseller lists so you can see what else is doing well. This is the list I ended up with after editing:

1. Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey (Houghton Mifflin)
2. Delights and Shadows by Ted Kooser (Copper Canyon Press)
3. Averno by Louise Glück (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
4. The House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poems by David Kirby (Louisiana State University Press)
5. District and Circle by Seamus Heaney (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
6. The Human Line by Ellen Bass (Copper Canyon Press)
7. Present Company by W. S. Merwin (Copper Canyon Press)
8. Queen of a Rainy Country: Poems by Linda Pastan (W. W. Norton)
9. Sleeping Upside Down by Kate Lynn Hibbard (Silverfish Review Press)
10. After by Jane Hirshfield (Harper Perennial)

A few remarks:

a) Copper Canyon is doing well. I am delighted to hear it!

b) Five books published by relatively large publishing houses, three by Copper Canyon, one by a university press, and one by a very small poetry press.

c) It's not a bad list, is it? Sure, one can argue about one or two of the poets on it according to one's taste, and some people might see all these writers as being more or less the same (card-carrying members of the "School of Quietude"), but really, the poets I know from this list are quite distinct: Kirby, for example, is not at all like Heaney, who is not at all like Merwin, who bears a slight but superficial resemblance to Hirshfield—and none of those are at all like Kooser or Glück.