Yes, I wondered about Joshua too, especially as his name doesn't show up on our members list.

Is Joshua a member here? I'm a bit puzzled.

Jayne

Jayne and others who've wondered, if you saw my final call-for-submissions update here and in a few other forums, you might figure out from whence Joshua came (and it's from the Able Muse mailing list, having entered the Able Muse Book Award contest a couple of years in a row, including the current one--results still pending!).

Cheers,
...Alex

Well, my initial response was less than dignified, whence I've been mulling to no avail how to bring it up to snuff, and hang it all...it was and still is:
Yahoo! The Ladies WON!!!
Three cheers and Congratulations to First Place winner Julie Steiner (erm, that makes my second congrats to her and that sonnet, methinks). Congratulations in Second Place to Susan McLean; and lastly but not least, Congratulations to Elise Hempel for taking Third Place. And I'll blow kisses to the rest of you lucky finalists, how's that? (don't let me catch you ducking).

Thank you also very much, Judge Chandler, for your kindness. I have a penchant for...fun, and do love you guys, though I never workshop my sonnetry and usually forget to pop my head in here to see what the rest of you are working on, kick me.

Thank you also to this year's Judge P. Aaron, I enjoyed your choices, and ahem, miswrote that final notice...I meant I envied you the gluttony of reading all those sonnets.

Thank you again, Alex, for this happy contest.

Here's to next year's Annual Sonnet Bake-Off...if only we could clink glasses over this...

Congratulations!
 

Kudos to Julie, Susan and Elise! And yes, Aaron, I'm with Jayne on the "handsome."

Unfortunately by the time I went online to vote, the deadline was past, but I did enjoy reading all the entries. For what it's worth, I was going to vote 1)The Jitterbug; 2) Saturday Night in...; 3) Shall I Compare Thee...; but congratulations to all!

Congratulations to Julie on her first place and well done to the other 9 finalists and better luck next time to the remaining 116 entrants. It would be nice to be able to read the unsuccessful submissions.

Dave

Yes, it would be interesting to have a 'sticky bottom' selection from the submissions. They could, of course, remain anonymous.

A number of posts on this thread have suggested giving members access to the 116 sonnets which I ranked below the top ten. I am fully open to that idea, and I would be curious to find out what other judges might have chosen for their top ten. A decision to open the file to all members would be Alex's, and he, far more experienced than I in administering contests, no doubt has sage reasons for keeping the other entries undisclosed.

That said, I should confess that I am an exceptional twenty-first-century person in that I do not believe quality and beauty in poetry (and in general) are nearly as "subjective" as is now almost universally assumed.

Aaron, one year I posted twelve, and after the vote concluded I posted my next best twelve. I do remember that I had 118 submissions, so like you I ploughed through a lot of sonnets.

If you ask the authors' specific permission to have their work included in a secondary celebration, and they give it, I have no problem. But from a copyright standpoint I really think they need to be asked first, because they only authorized the use of their work for the initial event.

I assume that many people may already have submitted their non-finalist poems to venues that take a dim view of things having previously appeared online. The workshop threads get pruned periodically, but the Bake-off threads are forever, so some venues do consider this "previous publication." Some sonneteers might be willing to risk that for a chance at being a finalist, but not willing to risk that for a somewhat lesser honor. (Especially if the final outcome of the secondary activity is their sonnet being passed over yet again!)

I agree with Julie. Personally, I was considering entry in another contest as Plan B if my sonnet hadn't been a finalist, and I'm sure others had the same idea.
(Is it true that the finalist sonnets are archived here for posterity? If so, then doesn't that mean the changes others have so generously suggested can't be made?)

Claudia