Round 70

Yusef: "The World" by C.K. Williams

Bob: "Eye Contact" by Lewis Warsh

C.K Williams' poem about living in France is chatty, entertaining, quite pleasant and filled with concrete details. He brings in Ponge, Fragonard. Unfortunately, he tries to draw out a didactic conclusion from his observations, in flatter language:

... reality has put itself so solidly before me
there's little need for mystery... Except for us, for how we take the world
to us, and make it more, more than we are, more even than itself.

Yet even as I type these words I think: if this were a William Bronk poem I would accept this language. Maybe I'm getting softer, more indulgent, as I resist the temptation to rip into this poem as though it were by Linda Pastan.

Lewis Marsh, though, comes strong with a poem reminiscent of Frank O'Hara's "Fortune Cookies": "The Trojan war was produced by Zeus for his own pleasure." I am a sucker for aphorisms, so Bob wins the round.

After 70

19-39-11