Round 61:

Yusef: "Lines" by Ruth Stone

Bob: "I Do Not Know Myself" by Hugh Seidman

It's surprisingly easy to find points of comparison between poems as they line up against each other. (Or maybe my talent as literary critic is to invent spurious comparisons.) In any case, both these poems are short, religious lyrics. Stone speaks of a self trying to cross a border between individual and cosmic consciousness. She loses me with the ending:

Sharp as the odor of fresh sawdust,
the color of lost rooms,
those erotic odors, angst of brevity;
like crossing your thighs
in a spasm of loneliness.

I hate similes. Seidman, a poet whose existence was known to me, but only vaguely, writes a starkly simple poem about seeking enlightenment. He trusts himself enough not to COMPARE what he is seeking to anything else, and wins the round for Bob.

After 61:

17-33-10