[Catherine Chandler]

What David said.

[Maryann Corbett]

I feel abashed. My observation wasn't meant to create this awkwardness, but to stress that the sonnet is indeed very good. Nevertheless, the objections are duly noted for the future.

[Brian Watson]

L4 isn't quite idiomatic. If I may be racially crude for a moment to explain my point, one might refer to "a black", or to a "coal black negro", but would it be natural to say "a coal black"? For the same reason, "... that gangly, felt-hat black whose... " doesn't sound quite right. I had to read the sentence a couple times before it clicked that "black" was being used as a noun.

I'm not sure I understand the title. Is it to underscore that the black man hunts for food what the white speaker hunts for sport? Or is it intended to suggest "food for thought?"

Other than that, I like this one a lot.

[Kevin Cutrer]

Definitely the best so far. I agree with Brian's critique of the "felt-hat black" image.

I agree that the title doesn't do much for this one, and if it is meant to suggest that the better hunter here hunts for food while the narrator hunts for sport, as Brian suggests, I'm afraid I was too dense to pick that up on the first couple of reads.

Anyway, I love this one.

[Gregory Dowling]

Yes, a powerful sonnet and a very acute analysis by Catherine. Just one grammatical curiosity as regards Catherine's comment: surely "laid" is the correct form for the past tense of the transitive verb, rather than a colloquial form? Or is this another Brit/US difference?

[Chris Childers]

Damn good. I just wonder with the others why it's appearing in a bakeoff for a second time. Maybe a book-keeping mistake by the author (whom I don't need to guess)?

Chris

[Susan McLean]

What I like in this one is the specificity of the details, the conciseness of the narrative, and the way in which "old walls" becomes such good shorthand for the racial and social divide between the speaker and the "he" of the poem. What I am missing is any real sense of the speaker, except as a white hunter, or his attitude toward the "he." So it's a vivid and memorable anecdote, but I keep wondering "Why are you telling me this?"

Susan

[Carol Taylor]

A little touch up would make this more easily understoood. I spent two days puzzling over the felt-hat black before I realized black referred to a person of color. I spent three days wondering why he laid supper down and then went off into the brush to skin it and stew it and presumably eat it by himself, though 18 squirrels/birds seems like a lot of food for one person. Then I realized he "laid" supper down with the .22. I would have said he "brought" it down, and I would have had him slip off home with the game to skin and stew it so he could feed his 12 kids.

Carol