[Certain]

Richard Schwartz: This topic really didn't play into your strong suit, which was unfortunate. But last week's didn't, either, and you made the most of it with one of the best verses of the tournament from anyone. Here, you seemed determined to put up a strong verse even though you didn't have your typical out-of-the-box approach. And you did so with rhyme. The rhyming was tremendous from the start to the finish here, while your diction remained spotlessly crisp. The one-liners were a bit disarming at times. I didn't like the gravy line at all, and the snail line struck me as very clever but a bit unearned in the spot that it was in. (Perhaps the reason for that was because the gravy line came right before it.) But through the crisp writing and rhymes and the clever one-liners was pretty thin content. And the verse never felt like it really evolved. The ending was just an ending, a moment in time that the verse decided to come to a close. Storytelling is your forte, and while it was great to see you step outside of yourself, this was a strange time to do so. And to do so when you present a somewhat rudderless depression rant that doesn't feel all that depressed stands out as a lesser performance than we know you're capable of.

Seymour BUTTS: Everything about this represented everything you represent, from the bookish reference of the title to the final image of the hanging. There was a lot of attempted (but not false, entirely) intellectualism and overwrought verbiage here, but it served a purpose for the most part. Your esoteric style connected better here because of the intensity of the image created. Essentally, you stayed within one image and wrote an entire verse about a few seconds passage in time. One of the things that I dislike about many of your verses is the seemingly irrelevant use of italics and bold. It doesn't seem like you're using it for emphasis or to shift tones or to shift narrative points. Everything is being told from the perspective of Jean-Paul's head, through third-person limited perspective. That's actually a good thing, but it makes the italics a little unnerving in a way because I'm looking for changes that don't seem particularly present. Maybe I'm missingsomething with that. Anyway, there were a few moments where clarity was an issue on first and second reads, but by the fourth and fifth, I found myself digesting everything this verse represents. The third-person limited was a very nice touch, a profession narration that seldom gets treated properly in this genre. The intensity that built throughout the second stanza came to a strong close. The awkward word choices and excessive use of adverbs and adjectives clunked things up more than adding to the aura, but they did both to a degree. I'd love to see what you could do in stripping back your writing to a degree, as you did in one of my favorite verses from you (the tree verse). But here, this is your style, your flair. Anyone who's read much from you should immediately recognize it. You wrote with intelligence and grace, though not the sparing type of grace but rather the more florid method. And for pushing so forward with your own, unique style in this tournament, you may find yourself finishing in the winner's circle.

Vote: Seymour BUTTS