[Jennifer Reeser]

Sincere thanks to Alex Pepple for the invitation to this competition. Quite an honor. I have been astonished by the number of entrants. To all participants and finalists: each of you faced, and now face, a staggering group. Good luck.

Please post your vote in this thread.

I must now - quite literally - see to a corpse; but I will return with mercy and love, to execute judgment.

Yours,
007

[Shaun J. Russell]

1. Bellay
2. Catullus
3. Rilke

[Birthe Myers]

1. Bellay
2. Goes
3. Marlowe

[Lance Levens]

1. Rilke
2. Du Bellay
3. Catullus

OO7, you did a fine job. I can't say that I've ever seen better poems to choose from.

[Don Jones]

1. Catullus (for the wickedness of it)
   
2. Du Bellay (for perfect pitch)
   
3. Scherbakov (for ambition and sentiment)

Yes, kudos to 007. All entrants and contenders salute you!

I have to say I really like the double-blind bake off. You can focus on what is before you without conscious or unconscious consideration of the persons involved.

[Spindleshanks]

I. Du Bellay
2. Borges
3. Catullus

[Maryann Corbett]

I'm not quite ready to vote, but I'd like to extend my thanks to DG007, whose identity I think I can guess from his/her intimate knowledge of Russian and the information tidbit at the top of this thread.

Selecting and commenting for these events is hard work for small reward and serious risk of feeling knocked about by others' comments. Please know that we appreciate what you've done.

Since our DG seems to be under some pressures elsewhere, I hope Alex will let us know how long the polls will be open.

[Shaun J. Russell]

Originally Posted by Maryann Corbett

I'm not quite ready to vote, but I'd like to extend my thanks to DG007, whose identity I think I can guess from his/her intimate knowledge of Russian and the information tidbit at the top of this thread.

Agreed. I had a strong hunch after the "off the cuff" translation from the Cyrillic earlier this week, then it was confirmed this morning. Regardless, I can't think of any better Distinguished Guest for this bakeoff, and the insights were splendid as always.

Like Mr. Jones, I'm also very fond of the double-blind element of this bakeoff. I think a lot of the traditional bakeoff complaints were forestalled for that very reason.

[Adam Elgar]

Many thanks to 007, and to the translators, for a highly enjoyable and informative event. Like Maryann, I'm not ready to vote just yet, but am pondering hard.

[Catherine Chandler]

Of course I now know who 007 is, though I had my suspicions before...

I hesitate to vote, since the only languages I have native fluency in are are English, French and Spanish (though I have taken university courses in Russian and German).

To rate -- and indeed write -- a successful literary translation, I believe one must have an intimate knowledge both of the source and target languages as well as the poetic devices, cultural nuances, and historical context, unless one wishes to appreciate and judge the English version simply on its merits as a poem in English, with hints from the crib or what can be garnered by Googling or other research.

That said, my choices are:

(1) Joachim Du Bellay
(2) Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

Like Tim, I have no third choice.

Thank you, Alex and DG007 for an interesting choice of translations and for hosting the bake-off.