This reading of sonnets by the 'Sphereans has been a delight, and one from which I've learned a lot, both from the sonnets themselves and from the comments on them. But as for choosing "winners," good grief, has that been hard!

But having told Tim I would choose winners, I have, despite the temptation to say "All of the above." And here they are, in two tiers ("One" being the "tops") of three sonnets each, with the sonnets in each tier roughly equivalent:

Tier One: Phenomenon; Aftershocks; Charlemagne's Vision
Tier Two: Hardy; Singing Bird; Lorenzo Lotto's Annunciation

And here are a few words about each, not to justify my choices, but by way of celebration and thanks for the astonishing quality of the poems it's been my privilege to read and think about during these two weeks or so:

"Phenomenon": What I love most about this poem in which there is nothing not to admire is its intelligence, the way it traces everything we know back to the most ordinary things that are with us all our lives: the body, the soapy water it needs, the sponge, the basin that contains them. I am enchanted by the reality of these things, the care they suggest, the way they do more than the people--even "old Eurykleia"--who use them, the energy with which water springs, "startled," and how the basin makes noise and is "amazed." I am persuaded by the way things "discover" us and usher us into whatever knowledge we achieve, so that even wisdom becomes--but only to someone listening as intently and intelligently as this poet--"a clang of bronze."


"Aftershocks": If this poet we all recognize had written nothing else so far but this poem, it would be enough by itself to indicate her place in American poetry, and suggest what can be expected from her. It's a glorious sonnet, perfectly contained by its central metaphor, sending out waves of meaning and implication. What this poem does with simple language used in complex ways--"where we are bound," "a stranger land," "the fault"--is miraculous.

"Charlemagne's Vision": This is an unusual choice for me; I am leery of poems whose point may be described as political, having found that many of them eventually bog down in the slough of polemics. But this poem is just that, an excellent poem, not polemics at all. It arrives at its political point via history, film-like narration, the imaginative assumption of a persona, powerful imagery and elegant language. It's a one-sentence voyage from troubled past to troubled present, unbroken, inexorable, weighted with people and events, traveling fast.

"Singing Bird": My suspicions about this sonnet's authorship point to Texas, because of its humor, its charm,
its tough-as-nails approach to what poets do, its healthy respect for "dailiness," its modesty, and its clear affection for "poor Septimus." And, of course, the skill and deftness of its execution!

"Hardy": This is such a good sonnet that it's a fitting tribute to a poet and novelist I admire greatly. It has the same gritty honesty as the work of the author it celebrates. It interprets his life as a response to the accident of survival, but without reducing him or simplifying him, or cleaning him up. It's compelling and profound; I think Hardy would have respected it and recognized himself in it.

"Lorenzo Lotto's Annunciation": What a gorgeous response to a work of art in another medium! This sonnet should be taught as an example of ekphrasis that works. The poem keeps its eye on the painting throughout, seeing through it to what it implies, not around it to what some other agenda could have embroidered upon it. The lines are jagged and "willy-nilly" in spots, and attention moves restlessly from one detail to another: the angel's hair, God's almost ominous arm in the doorway, the agitated cat, the Virgin's oddly calm expression. Nevertheless, the whole effect is somehow one of unity and serenity, both in the final images and in the language.


Thank you, Tim, for giving me such an interesting homework assignment! And my thanks and congratulations, also, to those poets whose sonnets I very much enjoyed but have not mentioned by title. This whole batch of entries could easily be the cream of an anthology on the sonnet. They illustrate beautifully the form's variety and resiliency, the way it can handle an inexhaustible list of themes and subjects, and handle them all in surprising ways, in the right hands, as these 16--no, 32--certainly are.

Rhina! Texas? That will come as news to Gerry Cambridge who hails from Scotland. Gerry is the editor of The Dark Horse, the best poetry magazine we have. His newest collection is Madame Fi Fi's Farewell, just out from Luarth Press, and I am bending his arm to do a gig as our guest Lariat. Julie Stoner can now learn the identities of all these masked culprits on the Ballot thread. I would like to thank Rhina for taking on so Solomonic and impossible a task, to thank all our contestants and near-contestants, to thank all those who commented. Finally, I'd like to thank Alex and Carol and Mike for launching this wonderful site and bringing us all together from whatever ports we hail from. This Bake-off has surely been as good a showcase for our collective talents as was the batch of longer poems Mr. Parnassus recently commented on.

I've been AWC (away from computer) for the ballot casting (also, perhaps, too nervous to look), and just want to say am thrilled to be in such fantastic company and to have made it into the upper echelons, no less. All the sonnets provoked pangs of envy (Emily gets the top of her head taken off; I turn green), though perhaps the image I most coveted was the cat's S tail in the Annunciation. Thank you, Rhina, for your generous and insightful remarks!

(By the by, I am particularly tickled to get so much positive feedback on Aftershocks as it provoked one of the bruskest acceptance letters I've ever gotten--the editor grumbled that he would take it "DESPITE the VERY Bishopian rhymes.")

Thank you, Rhina, for bravely winnowing these sonnets and making your difficult choice. I'm glad you deemed "Hardy" worthy of mention; I too thought it one of the standouts.

On the other hand I also liked "Millay's Child" and the Hopkins poem, which garnered little mention from anyone.

I guess "Aftershocks" is the overall winnner among the membership, and I certainly concur with placing it (co-equally) in the top three. Congratulations, Alicia!

Alan

Thanks, Rhina, for your kind attention to and good words about my poem. I feel honored to be among such accomplished poets--and to be selected by a poet I admire for inclusion in such a strong batch of sonnets.

Thank you, Tim, for including my sonnet, Tim and Rhina for your input and advice, and all the others who commented on the poem.

Tim, some unsolicited advice and opinion for the future - on the assumption we continue this excellent feature.

When the sonnets first started appearing without attribution I thought it was a great idea. Response was not slanted by the author's identity, and it was fun playing "name that writer". However, I've changed my mind.

I think we gave up more than we gained by not identifying the poets. Most notably, the writers were not part of the give-and-take of commentary, so I think we lost the very helpful and vital dimension of the author's thinking. (The only writer who was identified and responded during the course of this year's postings was Robert Mezey, and it led to some interesting exchanges.) In addition, there was no possibility to evaluate that particular sonnet in the context of the writer's overall work, which could sometimes be very interesting.

Interestingly, I checked back and we seem to have had more than twice as many responses last year, even with (my opinion) a stronger group of sonnets this year. I recognize there's a war on, and am sure that preoccupation and depression had something to do with the reduced response, but also question whether the lack of writer's identity was a damper.

Finally, I would be delighted and interested if any of the authors cared to reopen their threads and comment on the commentaries (it's an old Talmudic tradition).

Michael Cantor



[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited March 27, 2003).]

Michael, I think you're spot on, dead right. Rhina asked that the authors not be identified, but that is a mistake. Oh sure, a few of the authors, Paul Lake and Gerry Cambridge, for instance, were unknown to judge and jury, but they were the exception. Your Lariat is pretty disappointed by the lack of comment, the lack of traffic, and the paucity of even graceful thank you's to our judge. It may be attributable to the overwhelming response to Dick Wilbur's appearance, which came too close to Rhina's. It may be that we should have no further Bake-Offs, for unless our authors are extraordinarily fecund, I shall never be able to present our judge a crown of sonnets as good as these.

I agree with Michael. I held off engaging in comments on my sonnet because I thought it would give up the game. I also noted that a fair number of comments on the poems were directly related to guessing the authorship and didn't focus on the poetry itself (but this is just an impression--Kevin, if you're reading this, please don't ask me to back up my assertion with facts! :)

Many, many thanks to Rhina and Tim for putting this together. I enjoyed reading all of them and now I hope the poets jump in and comment on the comments.

--Robert Crawford

This is from an e-mail I sent Rhina this morning. I don't know why I didn't post it, but I'll repeat it here:
------------------
Dear Rhina,

With what surprise I saw that you named my sonnet in your top tier! I had assumed you would simply ratify the results of the poll, where I made a poor [non-]showing.

Truth to tell, although I like the end of 'Phenomenon', I dislike lines 1-4, which are leaden. I consider 'Aftershocks' a 'Great' poem. The closing couplet of Gerry's energetic sonnet are firmly lodged in my mind as lines I NEED (it's what I want a poem to be--something to help me go through life.) I love Catherine's, and that 'drowsy Christendom' and final 'salaam' are magnificent.
-------------------
P.S. I enjoyed the secret-author set-up, and I didn't miss authors' comments about their own poems; but in some of these the author was known (inevitably, in our tiny world), so on balance I agree with Michael (and Tim, to whom we all owe innumerable thanks for the time and patience he put into this, as well as other things Spheroid).

Deborah

I always think the minority voice ought to be in a smaller squeakier font or something. I don't think presenting the poems blind was a mistake. I rather enjoyed guessing from the sidelines and discovering how right or wrong I was.

Though I'm just a quiet observer most of the time, I wouldn't underestimate the effect war has on (normally chatty) folks and their sense of priorities or enjoyment of things.

Many congratulations to all the sonnet makers, for all the sonnets were indeed impressive, and a special thanks to Rhina, whose comments and energy and wisdom are always an inspiration here.
Big thanks to you, too, Tim, for much the same reasons.

wendy



[This message has been edited by wendy v (edited March 27, 2003).]

Dear Rhina,
Many thanks for undertaking this daunting task.
Cowardly as always, I didn't even vote myself; unwilling to risk upsetting 14 people and only pleasing one (but also worrying about apples and pears).
Thanks also for your insightful comments; we couldn't have hoped for a better judge.
Best wishes,
David

If you use published poems there's going to be a likelihood that many of us, including the judge of the bake-off, will be familiar with the work, isn't there? So maybe the next bake-off should be unpublished poems?

Carol

Hmmm. Since I've never published anything, Carol's idea appeals to me http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif . (Then again, I assume that that Tim will again be narrowing the field, so my stinkers probably wouldn't make it into the sweet 16. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/frown.gif )

For anonymity's sake, the poems would have to be unworkshopped, too. But that unpublished, unworkshopped state might encourage discussion. I refrained from commenting too much on these published poems because, rightly or wrongly, I assumed that the authors were unlikely to welcome advice for tinkering with something that they and an editor had already deemed final enough for publication.

Julie Stoner

I for one would be curious to know where these were published. It would be interesting to see what publications/publishers are actually publishing formal work.

Howsabout it?

Tom

I've been in and out of this forum for awhile now, but I'd like to say thanks for doing this--to the writers, to Rhina, and to everyone who commented.

I liked the fact that the poems' authors weren't identified. That allowed for a completely unbiased response, on my part. I admire some of the poets so much that I confess to a predisposition whenever I see the name in print.

I've found myself reading and re-reading those poems, and it has been an incredible learning experience. It occurred to me that the thread is an excellent resource for teachers of poetry, because it reflects the best that can be done, in my humble opinion.

So consider my post a thank you and a vote of admiration as well.

It was an honor to be in such fine company and judged by such a wonderful poet and person.

I'm joining the party late today, since I was off to work early and home late. But many thanks to Rhina (who as I recall was deservedly one of the winners in last year's bake-off) for her perceptive comments and critique and to Tim for organizing all this.

I was both surprised and delighted to be included. As I've told Tim elsewhere, I felt like a guy who takes a wrong turn and walks into an exclusive party, but they hand him a glass of champagne anyway!

Rhina, I can't imagine a more knowledgeable, experienced successor to Dick Davis as the judge. Regardless of the format (names or not, published or not), I hope Tim keeps this tradition going. Perhaps next year Tim can persuade one of this year's winners, Alicia, Deborah or Paul, to follow in your and Dick's footsteps.

Michael Cantor made the suggestion above that the authors reopen the threads on their poems. I see no one has done that as yet. I would love to hear what everyone has to say, so I'll go do that now in hopes it will break the ice.

I'll just say that many of these poems were really, really good, and reading the Rhina's comments and the others helped enhance my appreciation by no small degree. I'm actually going around and waving some of them in various people's faces, demanding that they join me in my veneration. I'm glad I stumbled here.

Chris

I agree that tinkering with published work might be annoying to the poet, but we could all take a lesson from the positive energy Rhina puts into her commentary. That made this superb batch of sonnets all the more eye-opening. The Bake-Off has been a terrific success if luring fine work is any indication, and even more so if we can judge by its entertainment and literary value to the readers.

I like Carol's idea to include unpublished sonnets next time.

Many thanks to Rhina, Tim, Alex and all the participants. A most enjoyable performance!

Congratulations to Alicia, Paul and Deborah, as well as Catherine, Gerry and Bob M.!

Terese

I have to confess I don't know where all these poems were published. Paul's and Tim's were Sewanee Review. Alan's was probably in the Formalist. Gerry's and David's I first encountered in their new books. Wiley's poem is in his e-book at the New Formalist. And some of the poems are "forthcoming." The only reason I've asked for "published" work is to filter things out, a screening device, as it were.

I’ve never posted here before, but have enjoyed occasionally visiting the site to see how things were progressing with the “bake off”. Some good sonnets, and thanks to Tim and Rhina: to Tim for his enthusiastic presentation of the work here, and for including my sonnet, and to Rhina for her insightful commentaries/critiques of the poems. I have posted no response to individual poems for the usual reason, lack of time; besides, I do enough responding to poems submitted for The Dark Horse as it is. But for the record, and among a strong field, my own favourites here are ‘Hardy’; ‘Phenonomenon’; ‘Unposted’; ‘Millay’s Child’; ‘Charlegmagne’s Vision’; and ‘Aftershocks’. I enjoyed Tim’s plain speaking in a poem I knew; conversely, Deborah Warren has a remarkable ability to harness exuberant language in a strict form. She is also unusual among writers in form in dealing with what one might call “visionary realities” one would associate with a Whitman or a Jeffers; in this respect she reminds me a little of Hopkins, without his peculiarity. Her work has an arresting Anglo-saxon energy married to a formal grace. Robert Crawford’s poem I enjoyed for its documentary veracity, and nice touches such as the puns on “lines” and “affairs” (and was interested in the echo of “Out, Out--” at the end); Paul Lake’s, for its linguistic density which in other hands might have become clotted but here is almost ironically gorgeous; ‘Hard Winter’ I liked for its social empathy, a quality not too common among New Formalists; ‘Forty-Eight’ -- which I published in The Dark Horse -- for its humour, wry affection, and the surprise of that “dropped” drift.
Taking up Bruce McBirney’s suggestion I’m posting a bit of background to ‘Singing Bird’ on its thread.

Gerry Cambridge

Rhina, despite her identifying Gerry Cambridge as a Texan, has done her usual fine job of commenting on the sonnets. So thank you, Rhina, and thank you, Tim, for taking the time to post the sonnets and critique them. It's a fascinating group, and I agree with the judging. I got a good suggestion on fixing a troublesome line in my own (unpublished) one.


[This message has been edited by R. S. Gwynn (edited March 28, 2003).]

Tim,

Although I haven't commented on the poems in the sonnet bake-off, I have greatly enjoyed reading the poems and the comments. The quality of work is intimidatingly good!

I think the anonymity of the author should be maintained - not only does it add spice to the exercise, it also does away entirely with the bias that must necessarily prevail if identities were to be known.

Shekhar

I'm overjoyed that so many visitors to the site have found this thread useful and fun. Sam, can you blame me? It's not my fault that you and Gerry have so much in common, especially the tone! I was almost sure this sonnet was yours!

My thanks to those who have said kind things about my judging. I've done few things lately that I've enjoyed so much. My other recent major project has been making slipcovers, and believe me, this is infinitely better.

Now, as to anonymity for the next Bake-Off, with all due respect to Tim, I still think anonymity is a good idea, for precisely the reasons cited by Julie and kday1 and others: people really are in awe of poets they already know they admire, and hesitate to find the nits in their poems. But I'm grateful when some good, truthful, intelligent reader finds the nits in mine--there always are some--even in published work, and even if I can't figure out how to get rid of them. The nits, that is, not the poet friends.

There is also, as Julie says, strong hesitation about commenting on poems that have already appeared somewhere, on the grounds that they must already be perfect. I won't even go there. Of course, there's no avoiding the use of poems that have been workshopped or read at poetry readings, unless you accept only poems composed by anchorites who live in caves in the desert. And even then...

I was away and without internet access for most of the bake-off. Having returned and read the other sonnets, I’m both pleased and very flattered that Rhina should have ranked mine in the second tier. They’re an extraordinary group of poems, even better overall, I think, than last year’s batch. I’m grateful for Rhina’s willingness to undertake the difficult job of judging them and for her thoughtful and generous comments on all the poems, and I’m sorry to have missed most of the discussions. Thank you too, Tim, for organizing the bake-off and making the selections, and for inviting me to participate.

I enjoyed guessing the authors of the first few sonnets posted, but I agree with those who have pointed out that anonymity is undercut somewhat by the use of published poems. It might be fun, next year, to see the recent, unpublished sonnets of fellow 'Spherians. Either way, I look forward to next year's bake-off and hope to be able to participate in it much more fully.

I doubt that the Bake-Off would be the right forum for this, but wouldn't it be outrageous fun if people were willing to write on the same theme, or to include the same elements somehow--e.g., if everyone had to slip a grasshopper and a cricket into the poem somehow, a la the recent Keats/Hunt topic on the "Musing on Mastery" board?

Or, if everyone had to parody the style of another well-known poet?

Hmmm, I could splat a Kelly-green grasshopper on the cracked windshield of a good-looking farmboy's pickup truck, while decrepit, arcane farm machinery evokes singing crickets...

Julie Stoner

[This message has been edited by Julie Stoner (edited March 29, 2003).]