World Cup note, Group G

Everybody thinks that the only issue in Group G is whether Brazil or Portugal will be in first place after the games this afternoon. But here are the standings:

Team	MP	W	D	L	GF	GA	Pts
Brazil	2	2	0	0	5	2	6
Portugal	2	1	1	0	7	0	4
Côte d'Ivoire	2	0	1	1	1	3	1
Korea DPR	2	0	0	2	1	9	0

Yes, it's unlikely that the standings will change much, but given how helpless North Korea was against Portugal, and given how explosive the Ivory Coast can be, and given that the last time Brazil and Portugal played, Brazil won 6-2, it would not be completely and utterly miraculous (it would not be like a fifth set in tennis that goes to 70-68!) for the Ivory Coast to still qualify.

Let's say Brazil beats Portugal 3-0 (which is not an extreme result). Then the Ivory Coast has to win 6-0 (which is extreme, but as I said, not utterly unlikely, given NK's weakness and IC's offensive potential). That would put IC and P in a tie, and they would have to draw lots. So any nine-goal swing, with B and IC winning, makes it possible for IC to advance (7-1 for IC and 3-0 for Brazil would have IC advancing on goals scored, for example).

I do not, repeat DO NOT, think this is what's going to happen, but I thought I'd go on the record with it, just in case it does happen, so that I can pat myself on the back about it. :-)

Vertical Realities

Here's a line that quickly characterizes someone:

... he always chooses his luck and clothes one size too small for him.

The whole poem, "Vertical Realities," by Luljeta Lleshanaku (translated by Henry Israeli and Shpresa Qatipi), has this sense of how the barest of brushstrokes can imply a world. The collection Child of Nature is available from New Directions.

Claudia Roth Pierpont's "Black, Brown, and Beige" is a review of several recent books about Duke Ellington, but it concludes with an image of Charles Mingus that brought tears to my eyes:

Two years before Ellington died, in 1972, Yale University held a gathering of leading black jazz musicians in order to raise money for a department of African-American music. Aside from Ellington, the musicians who came for three days of concerts, jam sessions, and workshops included Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Mary Lou Williams, and Willie (the Lion) Smith. During a performance by a Gillespie-led sextet, someone evidently unhappy with this presence on campus called in a bomb threat. The police attempted to clear the building, but Mingus refused to leave, urging the officers to get all the others out but adamantly remaining onstage with his bass. “Racism planted that bomb, but racism ain’t strong enough to kill this music,” he was heard telling the police captain. (And very few people successfully argued with Mingus.) “If I’m going to die, I’m ready. But I’m going out playing ‘Sophisticated Lady.’ ” Once outside, Gillespie and his group set up again. But coming from inside was the sound of Mingus intently playing Ellington’s dreamy thirties hit, which, that day, became a protest song, as the performance just kept going on and on and getting hotter. In the street, Ellington stood in the waiting crowd just beyond the theatre’s open doors, smiling.

Who else but Mingus would have come up with an act like that? Well, maybe Charlie Haden, who dedicated "Song for Che" to freedom fighters in Angola and Mozambique while performing in Lisbon in 1971. See here for his version of the story.

Astonishing Confidence in the Self

In Mark Lilla's recent article on the Tea Partiers in the New York Review of Books, he comes up with one of his wonderful summations of a situation:

The new Jacobins have two classic American traits that have grown much more pronounced in recent decades: blanket distrust of institutions and an astonishing—and unwarranted—confidence in the self. They are apocalyptic pessimists about public life and childlike optimists swaddled in self-esteem when it comes to their own powers.

But I would add that these "new Jacobins" are not just American, as I have seen the same combination of public pessimism and private optimism in Switzerland as well. Many Swiss are just as skeptical of public institutions as Americans are (especially of what they call "Schulmedizin," that is, mainstream medicine) and just as optimistic about their own perceptions of the world ("the homeopathic treatment worked for me"). So while Lilla has perhaps correctly diagnosed the Tea Partiers here, he has limited the scope of his observation too much: what he identifies as "classic American traits" may once have been uniquely or at least especially American, but they have gone global as well—or at least Swiss. (Or does this have something to do with democracy?)

Perhaps someone will say, "Well, Andrew, what about your own 'astonishing confidence' in yourself?" But I am not skeptical about public institutions, and I try to understand my own experience as anecdotal (no matter how fun or funny the anecdotes are) and not representative of how people are and how the world is.

I See the Sea

It looks like a metaphor, but it's not:

I see
the sea
shrink,
then shrink again,
and I
float farther
from the invisible shore.

(Shams Langroodi, "I See the Sea ...", tr. Sholeh Wolpé)

The shrinking of the Caspian Sea ... although the page I found the satellite photo on says the following:

Along with increasing pollution, the Caspian Sea has also seen its water level fluctuate in past decades, at least partly due to human activity. As dams were constructed on rivers feeding the Sea its water level fell during the 1960s and 1970s, leading to construction on newly exposed shorelines. But since the late 1970s the water level began to rise again and has now risen by around 2.5 metres. Today it has stabilised and may even be falling again.

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Final Round Results

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, FINAL ROUND RESULTS

The winner of the final round of my sixth Daily Poem Project is Winter's Tale, by Maxine Kumin, which received 9 votes out of 44 cast.

Adjectives of Order, by Alexandra Teague, came in second with 8 votes, while Trick, by Sam Willetts, and Ecclesiastes, by Khaled Mattawa, tied for third with 6 votes each. All 12 poems received at least one vote.

I would like to thank everyone who participated, especially those of you who took the time to vote almost every week!

The winners of the first five Daily Poem Projects:

1DPP: "The Shout," by Simon Armitage
2DPP: "Fragment," by A. E. Stallings.
3DPP: "Inside the Maze (II, III, and IV)", by Hadara Bar-Nadav (blog vote)
3DPP: "Friends", by Laure-Anne Bosselaar (class vote)
4DPP: "Come to Me, His Blood," by Martha Rhodes
5DPP: "Cataract op," by Edward Field

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Final Round call for votes

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, FINAL ROUND

Here are the poems to vote for in the final round of the sixth Daily Poem Project. They are the winners of the twelve rounds from Monday, March 1, to Sunday, May 23 (each week's poems being those that appeared on Poetry Daily that week).

1. Trick, by Sam Willetts.
2. Ecclesiastes, by Khaled Mattawa.
3. To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor’s Garage, by Eduardo C. Corral.
4. In the Men's Room at the Café Provence, by F. D. Reeve.
5. The Bus Driver, by Hédi Kaddour, tr. Marilyn Hacker.
6. Winter's Tale, by Maxine Kumin.
7. H1N1, by Robyn Schiff.
8. Montana Sky, by Don Welch.
9. Arcadian, by Dan Beachy-Quick.
10. War Stories, by Charles Bernstein.
11. With God in the Morning, by Aliki Barnstone.
12. Adjectives of Order, by Alexandra Teague

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, JUNE 5! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results.

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

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week 12 results

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK TWELVE RESULTS

The winner of the twelve week of my sixth Daily Poem Project is Adjectives of Order, by Alexandra Teague, which received 7 votes out of 15 cast.

Starlings, by James Schuyler, finished second with six votes. In the most lopsided vote in DPP history, those two poems received 13 of the 15 votes; two other poems received one vote each.

My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for the final round shortly.

The winner of the first week was Trick, by Sam Willetts.
The winner of the second week was Ecclesiastes, by Khaled Mattawa.
The winner of the third week was To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor’s Garage, by Eduardo C. Corral.
The winner of the fourth week was In the Men's Room at the Café Provence, by F. D. Reeve.
The winner of the fifth week was The Bus Driver, by Hédi Kaddour, tr. Marilyn Hacker.
The winner of the sixth week was Winter's Tale, by Maxine Kumin.
The winner of the seventh week was H1N1, by Robyn Schiff.
The winner of the eighth week was Montana Sky, by Don Welch.
The winner of the ninth week was Arcadian, by Dan Beachy-Quick.
The winner of the tenth week was War Stories, by Charles Bernstein.
The winner of the eleventh week was With God in the Morning, by Aliki Barnstone.

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week 12 call for votes

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK TWELVE

Here are the poems to vote for in the twelfth and final week of the sixth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, May 17, to Sunday, May 23):

May 23: After Taxes, by Graham Foust (vote only on the first poem)
May 22: Haying, by Deborah Digges
May 21: An Iris Murdoch Reader, by John Drexel
May 20: Starlings, by James Schuyler (vote only on the first poem)
May 19: A Holiday in the Same Place, by Patrick Mackie
May 18: Tramp in Flames, by Paul Farley (vote only on the first poem)
May 17: Adjectives of Order, by Alexandra Teague

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, MAY 29! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results.

Next week: the final run-off among the 12 weekly winners to determine who wins the overall Sixth Daily Poem Project. (Call for votes to be posted on Sunday, May 30.)

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.
The winner of week six was Winter's Tale, by Maxine Kumin.
The winner of week seven was H1N1, by Robyn Schiff.
The winner of week eight was Montana Sky, by Don Welch.
The winner of week nine was Arcadian, by Dan Beachy-Quick.
The winner of week ten was War Stories, by Charles Bernstein.
The winner of week eleven was With God in the Morning, by Aliki Barnstone.

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week 11 results

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK ELEVEN RESULTS

The winner of the eleventh week of my sixth Daily Poem Project is With God in the Morning, by Aliki Barnstone, which received 4 votes out of 13 cast.

Seasonal Anxiety, by A. E. Stallings (winner of DPP2 for her poem "Fragment"), finished second with three votes.

My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week ten shortly.

The winner of the first week was Trick, by Sam Willetts.
The winner of the second week was Ecclesiastes, by Khaled Mattawa.
The winner of the third week was To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor’s Garage, by Eduardo C. Corral.
The winner of the fourth week was In the Men's Room at the Café Provence, by F. D. Reeve.
The winner of the fifth week was The Bus Driver, by Hédi Kaddour, tr. Marilyn Hacker.
The winner of the sixth week was Winter's Tale, by Maxine Kumin.
The winner of the seventh week was H1N1, by Robyn Schiff.
The winner of the eighth week was Montana Sky, by Don Welch.
The winner of the ninth week was Arcadian, by Dan Beachy-Quick.
The winner of the tenth week was War Stories, by Charles Bernstein.

Mehldau Redman Basel May 16 2010

Brad Mehldau and Joshua Redman played as a duo at the Stadtcasino in Basel tonight. They opened with a Mehldau original called "The Falcon Will Fly Again," during which I was struck by how much Redman's playing has developed since I last since him early in the millennium. He was already very good, but his phrases and phrasing tonight were so much more fluid and individual then they had been back then. In contrast, I wondered if Mehldau had any more room to develop at all: I've seen him four or five times since I first saw him in a solo show at the Basel Art Museum in 1999 or 2000, and he's always been fantastic, so good that there's little room to develop. His playing on this first piece was fabulous, but for this diehard Mehldau fan, not very surprising.

But then they played "Monk's Dream," and Mehldau proved me oh so wrong! I've always loved the way he plays that tune, but he and Redman arranged it in such a way that its usual driving rhythm only slowly developed out of an almost rubato approach. In Mehldau's long solo, one stunning passage went into the stride piano that was where Monk originally came from, but a version of stride refracted through the combination of the 80 years of jazz history since its heyday and the classical chops that have always been Mehldau's forte. Absolutely stunning—yes, he has developed since I first saw him!

The other highlight of the show for me was their arrangement of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." They made it sound so wonderfully melancholy, only to have it explode into something like the power of rock and roll near the end of Redman's tenor solo (Mehldau had taken the first solo). I love how Mehldau turns "pop" into jazz just as wonderfully as his predecessors did.

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Eleven Call for Votes

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK ELEVEN

Here are the poems to vote for in the eleventh week of the sixth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, May 10, to Sunday, May 16):

May 16: Woodpile, by Beth Bachmann (vote only on the first poem)
May 15: Voices from the Corners of the Sky, by Barbara Ras
May 14: Seasonal Anxiety, by A. E. Stallings
May 13: La Bouderie, by Allison Benis White
May 12: With God in the Morning, by Aliki Barnstone
May 11: Interpretation, by Martha Ronk
May 10: The Winds, by Albert Goldbarth

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, MAY 22! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results.

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.
The winner of week six was Winter's Tale, by Maxine Kumin.
The winner of week seven was H1N1, by Robyn Schiff.
The winner of week eight was Montana Sky, by Don Welch.
The winner of week nine was Arcadian, by Dan Beachy-Quick.
The winner of week ten was War Stories, by Charles Bernstein.

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Ten Results

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK TEN RESULTS

The winner of the tenth week of my sixth Daily Poem Project is War Stories, by Charles Bernstein, which received 3 votes out of 12 cast.

In a very close week with low voter turnout, four poems tied for second with two votes.

My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week ten shortly.

The winner of the first week was Trick, by Sam Willetts.
The winner of the second week was Ecclesiastes, by Khaled Mattawa.
The winner of the third week was To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor’s Garage, by Eduardo C. Corral.
The winner of the fourth week was In the Men's Room at the Café Provence, by F. D. Reeve.
The winner of the fifth week was The Bus Driver, by Hédi Kaddour, tr. Marilyn Hacker.
The winner of the sixth week was Winter's Tale, by Maxine Kumin.
The winner of the seventh week was H1N1, by Robyn Schiff.
The winner of the eighth week was Montana Sky, by Don Welch.
The winner of the ninth week was Arcadian, by Dan Beachy-Quick.

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Ten Call for Votes

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK TEN

Here are the poems to vote for in the tenth week of the sixth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, May 3, to Sunday, May 9):

May 9: A Walk on Long Beach Island, by Eamon Grennan
May 8: War Stories, by Charles Bernstein
May 7: Of What Is Good Enough and Finished First, by Dick Allen
May 6: A Childhood Memory of Wordsworth's, Yves Bonnefoy, tr. Hoyt Rogers
May 5: The Dew-Tasters, by Lola Haskins (vote only on the first poem)
May 4: Survivor, by Tadeusz Różewicz, tr. Joanna Trzeciak (vote only on the first poem)
May 3: Winter Grasses, by Mary Leader

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, MAY 15! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results (which I might not be able to do until Monday, May 17).

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.
The winner of week six was Winter's Tale, by Maxine Kumin.
The winner of week seven was H1N1, by Robyn Schiff.
The winner of week eight was Montana Sky, by Don Welch.
The winner of week nine was Arcadian, by Dan Beachy-Quick.

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Nine Results

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK NINE RESULTS

The winner of the ninth week of my sixth Daily Poem Project is Arcadian, by Dan Beachy-Quick, which received 4 votes out of 15 cast.

Two poems tied for second place with three votes: Fin, by Wyn Cooper, and What Was Missing, by Susan Tichy. All the poems received at least one vote.

My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week ten shortly.

The winner of the first week was Trick, by Sam Willetts.
The winner of the second week was Ecclesiastes, by Khaled Mattawa.
The winner of the third week was To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor’s Garage, by Eduardo C. Corral.
The winner of the fourth week was In the Men's Room at the Café Provence, by F. D. Reeve.
The winner of the fifth week was The Bus Driver, by Hédi Kaddour, tr. Marilyn Hacker.
The winner of the sixth week was Winter's Tale, by Maxine Kumin.
The winner of the seventh week was H1N1, by Robyn Schiff.
The winner of the eighth week was Montana Sky, by Don Welch.

On Furthur

On Facebook, a friend asked what her Deadhead friends thought about John Kadlecik from the Dark Star Orchestra playing lead guitar with Phil Lesh and Bob Weir in their new band Furthur. Here's what I wrote in response to her question:

I've listened to all the Furthur shows on the archive, and at times Kadlecik does an excellent Jerry (one particular example is "Sugaree," where he's got the phrasing and fluidity of Jerry's signature runs for that song down). But he's at his best when he does something completely different than what Jerry usually did (there are several brilliant ... See Moreversions of "Candyman") or when he plays something Jerry rarely or never played ("Unbroken Chain" or Ratdog tunes or the Ryan Adams tunes).

But for me, the highlights of Furthur shows are, over and over again, Jeff Chimenti's piano solos (especially on "Unbroken" and "Eyes of the World").

Human Shields podcast

My band Human Shields played on the English Show on Radio X in Basel last night (Tuesday, May 4), and you can check out the podcast of the show here. (We're at the beginning, with three songs in all.)

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Nine Call for Votes

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK NINE

Here are the poems to vote for in the ninth week of the sixth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, April 26, to Sunday, May 2):

May 2: The Fever, by Kimiko Hahn (vote only on the first poem)
May 1: Fin, by Wyn Cooper
April 30: What Was Missing, by Susan Tichy
April 29: Another June & Journey, by Steven Heighton
April 28: Fire, by C. K. Williams (vote only on the first poem)
April 27: Arcadian, by Dan Beachy-Quick
April 26: Pussy Willow, by Paula Bohince

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, MAY 8! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results (which I will do by Sunday, May 9, 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.
The winner of week six was Winter's Tale, by Maxine Kumin.
The winner of week seven was H1N1, by Robyn Schiff.
The winner of week eight was Montana Sky, by Don Welch.

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Eight Results

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK EIGHT RESULTS

The winner of the eight week of my sixth Daily Poem Project is Montana Sky, by Don Welch, which received 4 votes out of 17 cast.

In a very tight vote, three poems tied for second place with three votes: Beer, by Lee Upton; Summer without Summering, by Teresa Cader; and The Hammock Knot, by Keith Ratzlaff.

My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week eight shortly.

The winner of the first week was Trick, by Sam Willetts.
The winner of the second week was Ecclesiastes, by Khaled Mattawa.
The winner of the third week was To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor’s Garage, by Eduardo C. Corral.
The winner of the fourth week was In the Men's Room at the Café Provence, by F. D. Reeve.
The winner of the fifth week was The Bus Driver, by Hédi Kaddour, tr. Marilyn Hacker.
The winner of the sixth week was Winter's Tale, by Maxine Kumin.
The winner of the seventh week was H1N1, by Robyn Schiff.

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Eight Call for Votes

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK EIGHT

Here are the poems to vote for in the eighth week of the sixth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, April 19, to Sunday, April 25):

April 25: A Dozen Rainy-Day Couplets, by Killian O'Donnell
April 24: Montana Sky, by Don Welch (vote only on the first poem)
April 23: Beer, by Lee Upton
April 22: Pseudonarcissus, by Jeff Coughter
April 21: Summer without Summering, by Teresa Cader
April 20: The Golden Shovel, by Terrance Hayes
April 19: The Hammock Knot, by Keith Ratzlaff

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, MAY 1! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results (which I will do by Sunday, May 2, 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.
The winner of week six was Winter's Tale, by Maxine Kumin.
The winner of week seven was H1N1, by Robyn Schiff.

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Seven Results

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK SEVEN RESULTS

The winner of the seventh week of my sixth Daily Poem Project is H1N1, by Robyn Schiff, which received 7 votes out of 20 cast.

In second place with four votes was First It Is Taken Away from Me, by Richard Tillinghast; two poems received three votes each: Losing My Hair, by Wesley McNair, and That Sweet Before Emotion, by John Stammers.

My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week eight shortly.

The winner of the first week was Trick, by Sam Willetts.
The winner of the second week was Ecclesiastes, by Khaled Mattawa.
The winner of the third week was To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor’s Garage, by Eduardo C. Corral.
The winner of the fourth week was In the Men's Room at the Café Provence, by F. D. Reeve.
The winner of the fifth week was The Bus Driver, by Hédi Kaddour, tr. Marilyn Hacker.
The winner of the sixth week was Winter's Tale, by Maxine Kumin.

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Seven Call for Votes

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK SEVEN

Here are the poems to vote for in the seventh week of the sixth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, April 12, to Sunday, April 18):

April 18: Losing My Hair, by Wesley McNair
April 17: First It Is Taken Away from Me, by Richard Tillinghast
April 16: That Sweet Before Emotion, by John Stammers
April 15: That was the mind's wild swarm trapezing from an oak limb, by Carol Frost
April 14: The Spirit of the Lord, by Afzal Ahmed Syed, tr. Musharraf Ali Farooqi (vote only on the first poem)
April 13: The Conquerors, by L. S. Asekoff
April 12: H1N1, by Robyn Schiff

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 24! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results (which I will do by Sunday, April 25, 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.
The winner of week six was Winter's Tale, by Maxine Kumin.

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Six Results

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK SIX RESULTS

The winner of the sixth week of my sixth Daily Poem Project is Winter's Tale, by Maxine Kumin, which received 4 votes out of 17 cast.

In the tightest vote yet in this round of DPP, three poems tied for second with 3 votes each: The Burthen of the Mystery Indeed, by Maurice Manning; Fifth Avenue in Early Spring, by Philip Schultz; and The Rain at Sea, by Don Paterson. All the poems received at least one vote.

Am I correct in concluding that the closeness of the vote means that there were many good poems this week?

My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week seven shortly.

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

Rockfact in May (Human Shields on May 8)

Here's the May schedule for the Rockfact Club in Münchenstein. Human Shields on May 8!

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.

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Five Results

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK FIVE RESULTS

The winner of the fifth week of my sixth Daily Poem Project is The Bus Driver, by Hédi Kaddour, tr. Marilyn Hacker, which received 7 votes out of 19 cast.

In second place with five votes is Some of David's Story, by Robert Hass. This week, two poems did not receive any votes.

My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week six shortly.

The winner of the first week was Trick, by Sam Willetts.
The winner of the second week was Ecclesiastes, by Khaled Mattawa.
The winner of the third week was To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor’s Garage, by Eduardo C. Corral.
The winner of the fourth week was In the Men's Room at the Café Provence, by F. D. Reeve,

for Emma Bernstein

Here's a stunningly beautiful poem by Bob Perelman, a eulogy for Charles Bernstein's daughter Emma.

My Girls

Here's a short poem from Robin Robertson's collection The Wrecking Light:

MY GIRLS

How many times
have I lain alongside them
willing them to sleep
after the same old stories;
face to face, hand in hand,
till they smooth into dream and I can
slip these fingers free
and drift downstairs:
my face a blank,
hands full of deceit.

This one struck me because it so deftly captures the experience of lying down beside a small child who can't fall asleep by herself, complete with the bad conscience of the father who tells his girls that he will stay with them all night even though he knows perfectly well he is lying to them, not beside them.

But something crossed my mind when I read the poem: it describes an experience, but there is a way in which the poem does not become an experience itself. I suspect that those who have not shared the experience Robertson describes will not get that much out of the poem; or rather, they will learn something from the poem, but the poem will not be memorable for them as a poem, but only in terms of its content.

I've recently come to realize that many contemporary poets and readers of poetry don't particularly like this kind of poem: the one that presents an experience but in a sense does not become an experience itself. But I'm perfectly happy with poems like this, which capture a feeling and communicate something about that feeling, even if they don't create a feeling of their own through their shape or the process of reading them.

It may seem as if I am describing Robertson's poem as lacking something, but I am not: to me, it is complete, even if I recognize that there is a perspective from which it might seem lacking.

I better stop trying to make sense here, and just hope that I have made sense to others, even if not to myself. :-)

Safe; At Home; Matter; Returning from Arizona; Apocrypha

Jane Holland's "Safe" (from her collection Camper Van Blues) describes a bit of sex "in the claustrophobic dark of my car," and concludes with a moment of pity for her lover's sperm, "those pilgrims / barrelling / through vast red tunnels / and wormholes":

Poor things, all the while unaware
of the absence of egg
in those entrancing corridors
or how I pull my dress down afterwards
wet-thighed in the darkness;
smiling, replete.

Shortly after I read that poem, I found a description of conception in Don Share's poem "At Home" (from his collection Squandermania):

... where wine

was drunk and semen flooded
the egg which lodged in the uterus

that built the daughter who greeted
the man and the woman here

And as if that were not enough, a few weeks later I read Sinéad Morrissey's "Matter" (from her collection Through the Square Window), which put another spin on the matter:

And though I know, thanks in part to Pasteur—
to his gauze impediments and penchant
for boiling—how you came to enter,
how you came to roll and hiccup and kick
against the windowless dark, feet to my heart
and skull to the pelvic cradle, I still think
of our lovemaking as a kind of door
to wherever you were, waiting in matter ...

And then a few pages later, "Returning from Arizona" concludes:

like longing for weeks to be sick
to prove the baby's taken,
then failing to find a tonic
for another being's foothold in your person.

As if that were not enough, Morrissey's collection also includes the wonderful "Apocrypha," which begins with her conviction, as a ten year old, that she "would never have children // simply by keeping my underwear on / at night-time," before veering off into the startling image of a woman impregnated by a bullet "still wet from the testicle / of a Roundhead Lieutenant // at the Battle of Marston Moor," and concluding:

What hope was underwear now?
If destiny hovered

with green wings and a stained,
indefatigable purpose

over my bedspread,
I, too, would be done for.

I don't want to do anything more with this collection of poems on conception and non-conception than note them here; I was just struck by the coincidence of reading several of them within a few weeks of each other!

[This was, I just noticed, my 1000th post on my blog!]

Leonti at Rockfact, April 10, 2010

Leonti will be playing at Rockfact in Münchenstein on Saturday, April 10. I keep promoting Nadia's shows because she keeps asking me to write more lyrics for her. There will be at least a couple world premieres on Saturday, as far as I know.

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Five Call for Votes

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK FIVE

Here are the poems to vote for in the fifth week of the sixth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, March 29, to Sunday, April 4):

April 4: According to Seneca, by Gustaf Sobin
April 3: Parable of the Children, by Cynthia Lowen
April 2: Letter to a City Under Siege, by Carolyn Forché
April 1: Strand, by Atsuro Riley
March 31: Some of David's Story, by Robert Hass
March 30: The Bus Driver, by Hédi Kaddour, tr. Marilyn Hacker (vote only on the first poem)
March 29: The Acacia Trees, by Derek Walcott

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, APRIL 9! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results (which I will do by Sunday, April 11, 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 Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Four Results

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK FOUR RESULTS

The winner of the fourth week of my sixth Daily Poem Project is In the Men's Room at the Café Provence, by F. D. Reeve, which received 5 votes out of 17 cast (with one abstention).

Two poems tied for second place with three votes: Your Family’s Farm, Empty, by Nick Lantz, and Canticle of Assisi Rain, by Jennifer Atkinson. All the poems received at least one vote.

My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week five shortly.

The winner of the first week was Trick, by Sam Willetts.
The winner of the second week was Ecclesiastes, by Khaled Mattawa.
The winner of the third week was To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor’s Garage, by Eduardo C. Corral.

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Four Call for Votes

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK FOUR

Here are the poems to vote for in the fourth week of the sixth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, March 22, to Sunday, March 28):

March 28: The Farm to Choose, by Nathaniel Perry (vote only on the first poem)
March 27: In the Men's Room at the Café Provence, by F. D. Reeve
March 26: Your Family’s Farm, Empty, by Nick Lantz
March 25: Canticle of Assisi Rain, by Jennifer Atkinson (vote only on the first poem)
March 24: Metamorphosis, by Lynn Emanuel
March 23: Treatment, by Ange Mlinko (vote only on the first poem)
March 22: Scholar of the Sorrows, by Mark Conway

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 MONDAY, APRIL 5! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results. (I'll be out of town for Easter, returning Easter Monday, hence the longer voting period than usual.)

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 Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Three Results

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK THREE RESULTS

The winner of the third week of my sixth Daily Poem Project is To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor’s Garage, by Eduardo C. Corral, which received 7 votes out of 21 cast.

In second place was Watchful, by Bob Hicok, with four votes. All but one poem received at least one vote.

My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week four shortly.

The winner of the first week was Trick, by Sam Willetts.
The winner of the second week was Ecclesiastes, by Khaled Mattawa.

Human Shields videos from June, 2009

Triolet on a Line Apocryphally Attributed to Martin Luther (words by A. E. Stallings)

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Penny a Point

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Gingerbread Blues

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Judas Kiss

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Pale Horse

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Three Call for Votes

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK THREE

Here are the poems to vote for in the third week of the sixth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, March 15, to Sunday, March 21):

March 21: Isis Unveiled, by Edward Hirsch (vote only on the first poem)
March 20: Waiting on Judgment in Prison, Regretting, by Hŏ Kyun, tr. Ian Haight and T'ae-yŏng Hŏ (vote only on the first poem)
March 19: Personal Estates, by Sandra McPherson
March 18: Vandals, by Jennifer Boyden
March 17: To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor’s Garage, by Eduardo C. Corral
March 16: Little Diary of Getting Old: viii, by Carlo Betocchi, tr. Geoffrey Brock
March 15: Watchful, by Bob Hicok

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 26! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results. (March 28 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.

Tundral Glories video

Here's a video of "Tundral Glories," by Leonti, from the album "Everyone/I" (which you can get from iTunes), with lyrics by yours truly.

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.

Trick

Interpreting poems is not a matter of having a set of pre-existing tools that you can choose among to find the right one. Instead, the poems themselves offer you tools for their interpretation, or, in a sense, you have to fashion your own interpretive tools from the raw materials that the poem itself offers you. But how can you fashion such a tool?

The "trick" is to find something in the poem that can be used to interpret other parts of the poem, as in the opening lines of Sam Willetts's "Trick":

The unexceptional mystery takes place:
around eleven, love turns to matter, Dad

dead.

The mystery of a moment of transformation (love to matter, Dad to dead) can then be a tool to interpret the poem further; here, as "Spring" is seen "breaking promises," or in the "opacity" of the alchemy with which the poem ends:

.... Dad

dead; ends of the opaque trick
that turns our gold to lead

"Dad" to "dead": an additional letter changes a vowel sound, and everything is changed. Poetry can act out this transformation, these "unexpected mysteries," but it cannot do anything about them, even when its own "opaque tricks" are made less mysterious by being made into tools.

Here's the whole poem, from Poetry Daily:

TRICK

The unexceptional mystery takes place:
around eleven, love turns to matter, Dad

dead. The ward grows and shrinks, early Spring
breaking promises through the glass.

Dad’s untoothed mouth gawps, and its last
O holds one darkness; dark of a worked-out

abandoned mine. His absence is brute
absurdity, his hand soft as vellum.

His new state exposes the stark child of him,
and un-sons me. No answers now to a son’s

questions, about this, about the sense,
for all his slightness, of a long life’s mass

coming to rest, a settling that churns up
grief in a rounding cloud. Dad

dead; ends of the opaque trick
that turns our gold to lead

Sam Willetts
Granta, Summer 2009

Haunt

Sherod Santos's "The Olive Stump" (which I discussed in my previous post) connects Aeneas and a Hutu soldier as figures of war; Maureen N. McLane's "Haunt" does the same with the Iraq war (or at least a war that closely resembles it?) and Scottish "murder ballads," again asking the implicit question of how to respond to violence beyond one's control or influence. "Haunt" concludes (with lineation I don't know how to reproduce here):

there's a dead soldier in the desert
& three crows wonder over and over
whether to cry out
an elegy
or to sit on his breastbone and pike out
his bonnie blue een

Is the poem considering whether one's proper response to violence should be to participate in it (piking out the dead soldier's eyes) or to memorialize its victims (crying out an elegy)?

Earlier, a different kind of memorializing is mentioned:

testimony weaving its own
shimmering cloth
we wear to keep ourselves warm
& to spare the others
our nakedness

"Testimony" appears here as something done both for oneself (to keep ourselves warm) and for others (to spare them), but even the latter is for oneself, in a way (to spare them our nakedness). And beyond that, the poem continues by apparently rejecting "testimony" entirely: "better not to have heard / the stories."

"Haunt" captures the deep ambiguity of the relationship between the individual and "murder ballads" old and new: what is "testimony" for? What are elegies for? Whom does memorialization serve? The "three crows" cannot choose between elegy and the continuation or confirmation of violence, and McLane's poem raises the haunting issue of how much "elegy" and "testimony" (and even "murder ballads") participate in the violence they describe.

The Olive Stump

What stands out for me in the first two stanzas of Sherod Santos's "The Olive Stump" is his use of the word "but":

1.

When hearing the name of Turnus,
Aeneas leapt the high walls of the citadel
and took the field, the crimsoned warring soldiers
might've marveled, might've set aside their shields
and dropped their battering rams, but they couldn't
have been surprised. The open ground was cleared.

2.
An old wild olive surviving shipwrecked
seamen had for centuries fixed with offerings to
a sheltering god was cut down with the rest and left
a stump. The gods overlook a lot of things, but not
a slight. Aeneas's launched spearhead buried itself
in that tough wood and the hero could not rearm.

These two contrasts function in the same way: "They might've ... but they couldn't" and "overlook ..., but not." The soldiers and the gods are Aeneas's audience; the contrasts highlight how they respond to the hero's actions: this, but not that.

This use of "but" in the first two stanzas marks an alternative in which there's one thing but not another. That is how "or" is normally also used, but the word's use in the third and fourth stanzas of the poem is quite different:

3.

At least until a siding spirit intervened and broke
the bite. The hero weighed his heavy weapon
and towered up again. We're not told if
the olive bled, or if it wept. Like the man
who clung to the lead pipe a Hutu soldier used
to beat his wife and son, it was beside the point.

4.
Meanwhile, the upper hand was hammered out
by the powers that be. The scales were lifted,
balanced, trued. The fight's outcome was settled on.
Who knows what happened to the olive stump,
or to the family of the man the Hutu soldier
dragged outdoors, doused with kerosene and burned.

These stanzas present an alternative only to dismiss it: the first alternative is "beside the point"; the second is framed by an equivalent question ("Who knows?"). The two scenes of violence that the poem compares (Aeneas, a Hutu soldier) generate effects and lead t0 conclusions—but is n'tthe poem saying that they are, in the end, "beside the point"? An epic hero is compared to a faceless participant in genocide, and the heroism is diminished.

The Humanities

Jonathan Mayhew has a quick and biting analysis of what's wrong with the "humanities."

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.

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week One Results

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK ONE RESULTS

The winner of the first week of my sixth Daily Poem Project is "Trick," by Sam Willetts, which received 10 votes out of 32 cast.

In second place was "Landscape with Ignatz," by Monica Youn, with six votes, while "More Precisely," by Ander Monson, came in third with five votes. Every poem received at least two votes.

We discussed Youn's poem for a half an hour or so in my Intensive Composition class on Thursday, and I began to see a lot more in it than I had at first. I suspect that it is probably even more convincing in the context of Youn's book (which is called Ignatz).

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

Ad with musicians

This ad does not have deeper implications for me (unlike this one), but it did make me wonder why the two guys can't get together and have a good jam. It plays on — even appeals to — an excessive rigidity that many musicians unfortunately have ("I don't play country" or whatever style) while simultaneously trying to overcome it ("we don't jam, but we both shop at Coop").

The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week One

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK ONE

The Daily Poem Project (or "Poetry Idol," as C. Dale Young likes to call it) involves reading the poem on Poetry Daily every day for a week, then voting for the poem you like best. We do this for twelve weeks, and at the end there is a final vote among the twelve winners to determine an overall winner. (For a list of previous winners, see below.)

I'm running the project with two classes this term, and I will tally all the votes from the classes and the blog to determine the winner.

So here are the poems to vote for in week one, the first week of the sixth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, March 1, to Sunday, March 7):

March 1: The Olive Stump, by Sherod Santos (vote only on the first poem)
March 2: Landscape with Ignatz, by Monica Youn (vote only on the first poem)
March 3: Haunt, by Maureen N. McLane
March 4: Trick, by Sam Willetts
March 5: Resort, by Kate Potts
March 6: The School of the Arts, by Adrian Blevins
March 7: More Precisely, by Ander Monson

The project will run for twelve weeks, and then the twelve weekly 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 (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 12! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results. (March 14 at the latest.)

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

The winners of the previous projects:

1DPP: "The Shout," by Simon Armitage
2DPP: "Fragment," by A. E. Stallings.
3DPP: "Inside the Maze (II, III, and IV)", by Hadara Bar-Nadav (blog vote)
3DPP: "Friends", by Laure-Anne Bosselaar (class vote)
4DPP: "Come to Me, His Blood," by Martha Rhodes
5DPP: "Cataract op," by Edward Field

Reading thousands of submissions

Timothy Green of Rattle has some interesting things to say here about a few recent essays on the state of poetry (and literature in general) these days. He's writing from an American perspective; I wonder how his comments play for those involved in the po biz in Britain.

Red Wheelbarrow video

This is striking and beautiful, but it also reminded me of a very different interpretation of William Carlos Williams's poem: in a seminar I took with him long ago, James Longenbach pointed out that WCW was very into modern painting, and it had crossed his mind to interpret the poem not as a realistic description of a real scene but as a modernist abstract painting with a blob of red and a couple blobs of white, with a bit of silver on the red as the "glaze." (Hat tip to SR!)