DPP11 results

Here, finally, after much delay, are the results of the voting in week 11 of the Daily Poem Project. This time, I was not waiting to see a tie get broken (or simply more votes be cast) in the blogger side of the vote; the problem was with the class vote.

In class on Friday, 14 votes were cast, with three poems receiving three each and two receiving two each. Not wanting to have yet another week in which the class vote did not result in one winner, I wrote to the two students who had not voted in class, as well as to the two students who had been absent, to ask them to help break the tie.

One of the absentees said he did not have time to vote, and one of the students who had not voted even though he had been in class sent me a vote — but it made the vote a four-way tie!

This morning, though, thankfully, I received a vote from the other absentee, who broke the tie and made After Persephone, by Tracy K. Smith, the winner of the class vote for this week.

But the bloggers disagreed: 12 votes were cast, with Hey You, by Adrian Blevins, receiving four votes as the winner. In second place with 3 votes came The Dark-Light of Spring, by Eric Leigh.

For me, many of these poems slip up for one moment, and that leaves them wanting. "Hinge of loss" is the line that slips up for me in Leigh. This may be unfair, because it is a longer poem, but that just means he has to maintain the right tone and diction and phrasing for longer, not that he's allowed to slip up.

Several other poems had similar moments, too. I was left with "Hey You": a deeply strange poem, but phrased just right, and with mysteries and puzzles that feel productive, implying that if I pursued them I would find something worthwhile.

The comments on the call for votes:

Bruce Loebrich's ranked list (my favorite is at the top):

76. The Dark-Light of Spring, by Eric Leigh
77. After Persephone, by Tracy K. Smith
74. 2:09 a.m. IM , by Janet Holmes
73. Hey You, by Adrian Blevins
71. There Is A Bird We Cannot See, by Molly Lou Freeman (only the first poem)
75. Bright World, by Carl Phillips
72. Paradise, by Arthur Smith

Felix wrote: "There Is A Bird We Cannot See" by M. L. Freeman is my favourite this week. It's a dark, yet powerful reflection on life and the intensities of living. The bird is, perhaps, a late echo of Keats's nightingale (also with respect to the sophisticated sound patterns of the poem).

Meanwhile, Thom Satterlee sent me an email that was so beautiful I asked him if I could post it and he gave me permission to do so:

'I vote for Paradise, by Arthur Smith. When I first read this poem, the day it appeared on PD, I knew it would be the one I'd vote for. I love what the poet is doing in this poem, making an impossible proposition ("I used to live there [in paradise]") believable through specific, surprising, musical detail. The way the first line speaks back to the title, I knew what Smith proposed to do in this poem--so I was never confused by it--and watched him put on his verbal show, a very nice one, I think. It's the sort of poem where the poet has worked hard to get everything right (the images, the lines, the tone of the speakers voice) so that the reader can relax and enjoy. I re-read the poem not to better understand it, but to enjoy it, the way you would re-watch a scene in a movie or enjoy an instant replay of a fine moment in a sport match.'

Week 10 results are here. A summary of the results of the first nine weeks is at the end of the week 9 results.

Henrik Nordbrandt

A few lines from Henrik Nordbrandt, The Hangman's Lament, trans. from the Danish by Thom Satterlee (Green Integer, 2003):

I asked for a shadow and you gave me a nail / long, rusty, and bent
("Near Levkas")

when the storm carries everything else away
including the memory of a freckled girlfriend
out over the bluing lake hidden behind the bare hills
("The Glass Door": page down at the link for the whole poem)

For every nightingale silenced
a gray straw burns in the grass.
("May Morning")

Nordbrandt has an exceptional feel for physical objects:

PRAGMATIC

The things that were here before you died
and the things that have come after:

To the former belong, first of all,
your clothes, the jewelry and the photographs
and the name of the woman you were named after
and who also died young...
But also a couple receipts, the arrangement
of a certain corner in the living room,
a shirt you ironed for me
and which I keep carefully
under my pile of shirts,
certain pieces of music, and the mangy
dog that still stands around
smiling stupidly, as though you were here.

To the latter belong my new fountain pen,
a well-known perfume
on the skin of a woman I hardly even know
and the new light bulbs I put in the bedroom lamp
by whose light I read about you
in every book I try to read.

The former remind me that you were,
the latter that you no longer are.

It is the near indistinguishableness
I find hardest to bear.

LATE SUMMER, 1991

Rain on a white table top
still reflects the drifting clouds
hours after the rain has stopped.
I dry the table with an old rag
a fragment
from one of your blouses, I think.
The ground is ready.
The leaves can let go of their grip
it is late
and gray enough for it.
A summer rushed like a landslide
down to the ground.
And there is dirt on the scrap
of flowered material you wore
one fine day in Algeciras.