[Maryann Corbett]

This is the thread I promised to start as a place to register your votes. Vote for a first place and a second place poem. I'll assign points in the usual way, adjusted for having just two choices: 2 points for a first place and one for a second. The voting will stay open until about 6 am Friday, Central Time (that's about noon Friday GMT) and then I'll give you results and the poets' names; I hope Wendy will also give us her choices at that time.

[Andrew Frisardi]

1. Eggplant

2. Station

Thanks, Maryann and Wendy!

[Orwn Acra]

1. Station
2. Eggplant

[Siham Karami]

1. Eggplant
2. Station

[Bruce McBirney]

1. Station. (Lovely tone poem. I'll be interested to hear what the author has to say about it at the end.)

2. Cassandra. (Succinct and to the point. And apparently even quotable! See Carol's comment on an adjacent thread after all the brouhaha.)

Wendy, thanks for your thought-provoking choices. I would have passed over "Station" without your explanation and insight.

Maryann, thanks for organizing all this!

[Philip Quinlan]

There were only ever two choices from this narrow field. The only difficulty is in placing them first/second.

1) Winter Sparrows. While it could use a little work (some cuts even) it is the more honest, straightforward, self-contained, and (to use Wendy's criterion) complete of the two. Love to know who did this one - don't recognise the voice at all.
2) Salting Fields. Probably technically the best poem, and ambitiously sophisticated for something so short (and someone so young). In the end not so complete, though, because it (thinks it) relies on so much mythological backdrop (unnecessarily in my view). Let go of that and this guy is going to write some stuff which will surprise us all, I think.

[Petra Norr]

1. Eggplant
2. Salting Fields

[David Rosenthal]

1. Carthage
2. On Bloomfield

Thanks Maryann for organizing this. Thanks Wendy for reading 80 (!) poems and writing thoughtfully about the ones you selected.

David R.

[Patricia A. Marsh]

1. Aubadergine
2. Prophetic