[Certain]

OK, it turns out I have time to vote on at least this battle. I'd already read the verses twice and now went through and read them again. Before I start with my breakdowns, I want to say that both of you did excellent jobs with a tough topic. You also wrote similar verses, in that you created your own folkloric versions of how the fire started. (The actual firestarter remains a mystery, my research shows. That helps your cases here.) Anyway, enough of that.

Purple Puke: Your class warfare angle resonated, but I wish you had done a bit more to develop the actual struggle that led to that finish. I liked the way it closed, though the language in the final line was a bit imprecise (in that you could have used "uniting them together" or something like that rather than saying Toby himself was united together). Your storytelling, as expected, was smooth, crisp and at times eloquent. I really liked the smoke monster metaphor that you used throughout the latter half of your verse. It was simple but made the verse much more vivid. You had to know you'd be outrhymed here, but a little more effort on that end would have been appreciated. There were almost no internal or multiple-syllable rhymes at all. The flow relied solely on the diction, which is a tough way to attack a refined rhymer such as Richard Schwartz. But I really liked the content here. Had you invested a bit more time in writing, by committing more space to the social aspect and by enhancing your rhyme scheme and cleaning up a few awkward spots, you could have had a truly special verse.

Richard Schwartz: At least once a verse, you have a couplet where the rhyming wows me. In this case, it was the second stanza's opening couplet. But that aside, the thing I loved about this story was how deeply you put yourself into the timeframe, with word choice and city references and plot decisions and everything else. You made me feel like I was being told this story in 1871, which was very cool. It reminded me of some of the faux-old-time stuff from How I Met Your Mother, though you didn't do much to lighten the mood. Instead you created a rather clever but simple plot. I'm not sure I'm convinced about the decision to light the house of another poor widow on fire. That seemed a bit much to me. But I liked the line about the hour for every widow. I'd say my biggest complaint about this verse has to be the very last line, which, similar to Purple Puke, felt worded incorrectly. Leaving your reader with a strong final word can create a resonant tone, and "from" came across as clumsy. Still, you told an excellent story and did it well. This verse was fun but also grim. And it felt of its time and real. Purple Puke probably had the content depth to beat you, but he didn't tell his story as well in any way.

Vote: Richard Schwartz