THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK ONE
Here are the poems to vote for in week one, the first week of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, February 18, to Sunday, February 24):
1. Edward Thomas's daughter, by Alison Brackenbury
2. In the Coffee House, by Tony Towle
3. A Suitable Expression, by Gregory Woods (only the first poem)
4. By way of introduction, by Bob Hicok
5. Transitory, by Lee Sharkey (only the first poem)
6. For the Sightsingers, by Muriel Nelson
7. Stemming from Stevens, by Lisa Williams
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. 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). (If you read this on Facebook, please vote on my blog and not as a comment on Facebook.)
In the past, I posted the comments only after the final vote was in, but this time around, I will post comments as they come in (so it is no longer a completely secret ballot if you vote early). I'm doing this because some voters (and potential voters) said they thought it would be more interesting this way.
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 FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 29! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which might only be on March 1 or 2.
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)
I vote for "Edward Thomas's Daughter"... I like the cleanness of the lines and the lyric strength.
ReplyDeletesara
I vote for:
ReplyDeleteIn The Coffee House, by Tony Towle
because it cracked me up. I thought it was cute & clever.
"jejune little ironies
that I hoped would pass for poems"
could describe most of my poetry! Haha, but maybe that's why I identified with this poem. :)
My runner-up choice is By Way Of Introduction, by Bob Hicock. And that was a tough call, because I really liked the poem (haven't I voted for him a lot before?). Coffee House won out solely because I laughed out load & said "I like that" when I read it.
Third on my list was For the Sightsingers, by Muriel Nelson, because I liked the imagery.
tony towle
ReplyDeleteMy vote goes to 'For the Sightsingers'!
ReplyDeleteI vote for "For the Sightseers."
ReplyDeleteI vote for "Edward Thomas's Daughter"... Nothing in this week's batch was really compelling--everything was so referential, so insiderly--but I could at least appreciate the neatness and economy of this poem.
ReplyDelete--Gabe
Has to be Hicok's "By way of introduction"...
ReplyDeleteNot only because of the beautiful metaphors and imagery he uses, but especially for the cleverness of the poem. This is what so enthralls me about poetry: taking a global event and relating it to a personal and private situation. A deeply symbolic and historical event (JFK's assasination), which shook the whole world, is contrasted by the death of a father. And the individual to whom the poem is dedicated is strongly connected to both events. Quite brilliant...
For this beautifully constructed contrast alone, the poem receives my vote.
I vote for Hicok.
ReplyDeleteAW
Tuesday update: Lots of votes coming in by email, too. 16 or so by now I think.
ReplyDeleteTime to cast my vote, as I've finally had a chance to read all the poems together.
My shortlist was Brackenbury, Hicok, and Williams. The Brackenbury seems to stumble syntactically a bit, though, in a manner that distracts from the poem, and the Hicok, while sharper than some of his recent work that I have come across on-line, still did not seem as whole as the Williams, with its beautiful movement of energy and idea. Though one line confuses me slightly ("They remain the fact"), I feel like the confusion serves the poem's overall effect, rather than detracting from it, as in the Brackenbury.
So I'm going for Williams.
I vote for "Edward Thomas's Daugther" because the last stanza made me take a deep breath. Also, I like the name Alison Brackenbury which sounds so suggestively English.
ReplyDeleteKaty, it seems we flipped the same coin,
ReplyDeletebut got opposite results! In other words:
Here's another vote coming in for Hicok's
By Way of Introduction ... though it was
very hard to choose between this one and
Towle's In the Coffee House.
I went with Hicok partly because we share
the same "hometown" (I think!) and partly
because the references to JFK and Zapruder
register stronger, more "immediate" effects
on me, than do Mona Lisa & the Village 'bar
scene' (though Towle used them both very
effectively, I must admit! I also liked T's
very cleverly balanced use of the words
'literally' and 'figuratively').
Back to Hicok ... The poem's dedication
(etc) gave me the feeling that Bob may
actually know Zapruder's son, which made
the poem feel all the more personal, even
private (almost).
Now I'm going to look back over For the
Sightsingers, and Stemming from Stevens,
and try to figure out what I missed when
reading them through the first time. FYI,
I've already figured out why ET's Daughter
fell short for me, and I may be posting
a rather long comment about it later,
on AJS's separate blog-item that is
specifically about that poem.
-- dhsh
My vote goes to the "Sightseers!" No particular reason, it just pleased me. This a rather nice little task, reading different poems.
ReplyDeleteLisa Williams
ReplyDeleteShe's amazing. Simply beautiful.