I've been traveling the past week-plus so haven't had time or means to participate much in this event, but I've read all the poems enough to know that I go with

3
8
1

in that order.

Thanks, Cathy and Sam, for mc'ing & selecting & commenting.

I think I hate this voting stage. These decisions are impossible.

For entirely subjective reasons, I need simplicity lately, and I got the purest and most immediate pleasure from sonnet 5. I also see all the strengths of sonnets 1 and 2, but lately I've read (and written) a surfeit of poems about age and death and something in my brain backs away.

So in the end I'm going with

sonnet 8 for first place,
sonnet 3 for second, and
sonnet 9 for third

Thanks, Cathy, for all your work, and Sam, for your comments.

Thanks, Cathy and Sam for your devotion to duty in the face of peril.
My choices:

9: Bird's Eye View
10: Stuffed
2: The Way It Ended

Peter

Thank you, Cathy, Sam, and all the poets. This has been great fun. And what a wonderful exercise in daily close reading--I could practically hear my brain cells at work.

I found the voting part very difficult, because several of these sonnets won my admiration but faltered in small yet crucial ways. (And I spent some time considering whether my idea of "crucial" was in fact "petty" . . .) I have a very warm spot in my heart for both #8 and #9, but my votes are:

#1. Sonnet #4, Dressing for You
#2. Sonnet #5, God May Forgive You
#3. Sonnet #3, I Need Men

Best,
Jean

8,
7,
10

Cathy and Sam, thanks for a fine job.

1. #8 - Surabaya
2. #3 - I Need Men
3. #4 - Dressing for You

Thank you, Catherine. Thank you, Mr. Gwynn.

Sonnets 8,7,2

Matriarch
The Way It Ended
Birds Eye View

I didn't find a perfect sonnet in the batch, but I found some I enjoyed very much, some that seemed to successully match the form to the content, and others I couldn't work hard enough to research and translate, though I'm sure they might have repaid the effort. I admire the patience and work you must have put into the selection, Cathy, especially with 68 sonnets to plough through. Thanks to you for screening and to Sam for judging.

In the end I went with what I considered the most successful sonnets, since the contest was for sonnets. I would have chosen Differing Visions but couldn't get past the choppy lines and the implausibility of a scenario in which a mother could miss the fact of her son's colorblindness until he was 5. She should have known it when he was 2.

Carol

8
3
1

Frank

editing in to say thanks to Cathy and Sam for doing this

1. #3: "I Need Men"

2. #8: "Surabaya"

3. #1 "Matriarch"