Round 9

Yusef: "Perfect Attendance: Short Subjects Made from the Staring Subjects of Strangers" by Rosemary Catacalos

Bob: "What I Threw into the Grave" by Michael Burkhard

Good poems with great titles: both are poems with cute premises given away in these titles. I have to give the edge to Catacalos for those long, sinuous lines and wryness:

As when someone's uncle Theo, his name the old Greek joke of "Uncle Uncle,"
misjudges his scythe-like sponge knife beneath the reef at Tarpon Springs


Burkhard is a tad more sentimental. This could be a tie, but Yusef is struggling and so I have to give him the close decision.

Score after 9:

2-6-1