[Certain]

ZYG: I preferred "zygote." Anyway, this verse was not your finest submission, thanks mostly to the amount of time you spent rehashing the parable of the blind men and the elephant. I heard that parable often as a child, and I've always liked it and what it says about our understanding of the world. But I was much more interested in your opening and closing sections in this case, as they more directly tied into the topic. Those sections were underdeveloped, and the tie between the parable and those important stanzas was not delineated well enough to link them coherently. That last stanza was beautiful, too, and had you done more to give us light into that world, I think you might have had a great verse. With that said, you told the parable well. You seemed overly focused on the phrase "human condition" rather than the entire quote, which is a shame because the seasonal aspect of it provides much of its beauty.

big baby: This was great. There were some rough edges, but it's one of the best examples of abstract storytelling I've read on these boards. You have such a way with words, but you so often diffuse your themes and trend toward half-assed joking. Those verses are interesting, but this was mesmerizingly beautiful. My favorite part was, "It's frozen and we said our hellos." The music metaphor was a little too outfront in the summer section. But then the fall section was so in-your-face and aggressive that it balanced out well. The juxtaposition of the stanzas and the different tones without having a different style or writer's voice was really nice. Moreover, the structure and content really illuminated the quote. The quote was the heart of the verse, really. I don't know that anyone here could have done better on this topic.

Vote: big baby