Round 66

Yusef: "In a Rut" by Ronald Wallace

Bob: "Some of We and the Land That Was Never Ours" by Juliana Spahr.

She dogs me while
I try to take a catnap.
Of course, I'm playing possum... (Wallace)

You can pretty much predict the rest of the poem will use a series of animal expressions, and that's the problem with this sort of poem: utter predictability.

From Spahr's title you might expect a response to Frost's poem that begins "The land was ours before we were the land's." That's what you get, in a seemingly endless variation on this theme: "Some of we and the land that was never ours while we were the land. Started from us and of the ground which was never with we while we were the ground. Some of we wore the land. Some of we carried the ground..."

Predictable also? Somewhat tedious? In the positive, Gertrude Stein sense of the word tedious? Some of I liked this poem more than the animal metaphors, so some of I awards the round to Bob.

After 66:

18-37-10

Bob needs only one more round to be declared the absolute victor, by winning over 50% of the rounds. He is already guaranteed has a healthy plurality. I will keep going to the end.