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...
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