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