Round 41

Yusef: "The Music of Time" by Philip Levine

Bob: "Butter & Eggs" by Harry Mathews

"Butter & Eggs" is one of the greatest poems in the English language. Well, maybe not, but it is unforgettable and certainly deserves to be in a "best of" anthology. (See the uncomprehending remark about this poem in the amazon.com reader review section for Creeley's BAP.) It is simply an extremely precise recipe for cooking eggs with butter. I'm not sure why it works as a poem, but it does. Why isn't Mathews better known as a poet?

Levine's poetry has declined since he wrote "They Feed They Lion" years ago. This is a good effort for Levine; I kind of liked it. But if you've read 50 poems by him you've read the other 450. Yusef loses with a pretty good poem. Not fair, but I don't make the rules, I just enforce 'em. (Actually, I made the rules too.)

Score after 41:

13-22-6