Round 58

Yusef: "Song with a Child's Pacifier in it" by Bruce Smith

Bob: "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" By Corinne Robins

Smith, a poet I have never heard of, comes out strong for Yusef with writing like this "and the air is perfumed with the lacquered black oil spilled / and volition like a little philosopher of hell..." This is an autobiographical poem with complex but not flaccid sentences extending over long sinuous lines, continually surprising.

The Picasso poem by Robins is amusing: what if the demoiselles in Picasso's famous painting could talk, what would they say? I generally don't respond well to poems with a premise like this. I've knocked the one about Beethoven's "sympathies," etc... I can't say it's badly done here, but Smith's poem is stronger, winning a round for Yusef.

After 58

17-31-9