Sunday, July 26, 2009

Week 6: Results

Beth, Dustin, and Dana were joined by guest judge C. Dale Young for Week 6: Epigraph. Click here to revisit the Week 6 poems.

KRISTEN MCHENRY
EMILY VAN DUYNE
EMARI DIGIORGIO



The easy part of Week 6 was selecting the winner. Congrats, EMILY!

KRISTEN and EMARI , you both made the bottom two this week. One of you received four out of four votes; the other contestant received three out of four votes.

I suppose the decision of who should go on permanent caesura seems simple, well, that is if you go strictly by the numbers; however, it is not a simple decision. The decision was so difficult that the weekly judges had a phone conversation in addition to their usual email correspondence.

KRISTEN, you received the four votes; EMARI , you received three votes.

EMARI , you were in the top for Week 2: Firsts, but you haven't won a weekly competition. You were in the bottom for the Curveball, so this marks your second time being in the bottom. KRISTEN, this is your first time in the bottom two. In fact, you have won three challenges: Week 3: Simile Vs. Metaphor, the Curveball assignment, and tied for the top spot for Week 5: The Between.

EMARI , when the judges compared your collected work from the competition with KRISTEN's collected work, well, they didn't feel your collected work was as strong as KRISTEN's. Therefore, you are on permanent caesura.

KRISTEN, you have survived elimination because the judges believe your collected work thus far shows great promise. Next week, give us the same caliber of work we've seen each week up until Week 5.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Emari -- you've been the voice of reason for me for a few weeks now. I'm sad to see you go, and wondering who will possibly keep me calm.

Congrats to Emily.

This is getting tough.

The Good Typist said...

Oh, my gosh. *Wipes sweat from her brow* Emari, I am so sorry to see you go. I love your work, and you were my pick to win this competition. I was just sitting down to write out my goodbyes and thank everyone for the great experience this has been...and now it looks like I have another tough week in front of me with the likes of Emily, W.F., Kathi and Micah.

It's always disappointing when something you put a lot of work and heart into doesn't do the job you were hoping it would in expressing what you were trying to say. Thanks for the second chance.

Emily said...

I am really, really disappointed with who the judges sent home. If we're going by 'bodies of work', there is another poet who I think clearly has the weakest body of work, and that person is still standing. This seems wildly inconsistent.

emari said...

Thanks, everyone. It's been fun.

I love my poem this week; it's my favorite from the competition, so I'm most-okay with being eliminated for it. I actually told Emily that on Friday. (I totally, totally called this, Em!)

I appreciate the weekly judges' deliberation, and I also want to thank C. Dale Young for celebrating the poem's unusual moves. I will take your suggestion as I work to revise it.

All of the guest judges have been very careful readers of my work, which though not nearly very experimental often works away from or in opposition to a traditional sense of narrative. I also respect the weekly judges for sticking to their chosen aesthetic, which happens to celebrate the confessional narrative tradition.

I realize at 6:19 am that Dara's comments from last week may have been the most helpful, though I was initially disappointed that she primarily commented on the endnote. But if I extend her advice--that either a reader is going to get it, or not--to my work as a whole, it's quite freeing. "Short Answer" is exactly the type of surreal lyric I am most interested in writing right now, and I can't worry about who's going to appreciate what I'm doing.

And being eliminated is quite freeing too :-). I can finally commit myself to finishing my awesome T-Rex poem. If anyone wants to see it when it's done, let me know, and I'll email a copy. And I have so many other poems to write.

Emily, you rocked it this week. Keep it up ;-)

W.F., you need to try a yoga class and not the hot kind.

Kristen, I love your lyrical sensibility and am excited to see you work with a Pantoum.

Micah, I never told you that I loved your Dolly poem. You have a real talent for catalogue/list poems.

Kathi, you are working the narrative, friend. Good stuff. The judges think so too.

Good luck, project versers. I'll keep stalking the blog.

Ciao!

Emari

niina said...

Emari - I was totally rooting for you. Boo! But it was strong work this week and congrats to those still in the competition.

Unknown said...

I really don't want to be a jerk (again), but I thought the poet whose work got the most votes earned the boot.

Has this rule now changed?

What other rules are gonna change as we go along?

And if we're gonna talk about a "body of work" leading to an exit, we can talk about that. In private.

As Emily said, I believe there's at least one writer whose "body of work" deserved a caesura.

How come we're not kicking off the poet with the most votes anymore?

Playing favorites?

Dustin Brookshire said...

Playing favorites?
W.F.,

Martin Ott once stated that he felt he wouldn't get a fair read from Dana after all the Dolly poem drama. Your questioning/insinuating
that the judges are playing favorites is as insulting as Martin's comment about Dana. The judges don't play favorites.

over and out,
Dustin

Dustin Brookshire said...

ALSO:

Project Verse doesn't have an application fee. I think that's pretty damn nifty for a competition that gives the winner:
 a contract for a limited edition chapbook published by Limp Wrist
 a weeklong residency at Marilyn Nelson's Soul Mountain Retreat* (for the poet to revise and finish his/her chapbook)
 an interview with Joe Milford of “The Joe Milford Poetry Show”
 a review of the chapbook that will be published in ouroboros review and Limp Wrist
 a year subscription to the Naugatuck River Review
 a copy of Best Gay Poetry 2008