RD 1: dead man vs NYCSPITZ - DEAD MAN WINS!

[Certain]

dead man: Your verses often come across as nonspecific collages of emotional portraits. What I loved about this one is that it never did. Here, you stayed within your safety net of metaphorical relationship angst and growing up and ennui mixed with deep regret, but you kept the story line in place with a specificity that didn’t feel like a gimmick but instead fleshed out all the details that sometimes come across as so vague in your work. Basically, this is the best version of the prototype dead man verse. Among my favorite lines:

Forever 21 the rings you stole to prove to your friends
you were something less than perfect. i confess
you confided. let's be honest, there was passion and soul
a shaky kitchen table and a bag of Merlot
a speaker and an ashtray and 2 boxes of smoke
a different color filter at the end of our ropes
we made a mental note to keep eachother engrossed
so i stared directly through you at the dinners we toasted
to friendship, scented candles and your husband's cologne
…
i know that i'm the mistake. another habit to break
you only know me as a walk to the lake, and nevermore
traversing yards and alleys towards Chicago and State
i rejoice when you fail. although it's prideful as hell
the only thing depressing is depression itself.
…
blank face to strangers and your lovers alike
getting up from bed to leave your husband at night
another gel capsule for a moment of rest
snap photographs of moments that you hope to forget

The extended metaphor is what makes it all so special. You whisper toward it. You never come out and say it. But the verse reads so clearly and cleanly when it’s presented and realized. I was about halfway through the second read when it clicked. I needed some form of explanation for the line about the teen years, and the entire verse came together all at once. (Alas, I’ve been wrong about these things before, so I may be reading into something unintended.) If I’m wrong, shame on me. From my skimming to count the other votes, it did not appear anyone else put it together.

Either way, this verse was beautiful. It holds up with or without the metaphor. There is an argument to be made that the article avoided the visual cues of the topic in favor of its meaning, which I also chose to do. I’m not a fan of image topics that include words, but I think this verse jibes well with the meaning of the cartoon. I would warn you, though it was not the case here, that if NYCSPITZ had captured the image better as a whole even with a lesser verse, this match could have swung against you because you did not match the tone or the visual and instead stuck strictly to the meaning.

NYCSPITZ: You are a great world-builder. You developed a very well-built science fiction backdrop here, somewhere between The Matrix, Battlestar Galactica and Harrison Bergeron. Your choice of fictionalized proper nouns showed a lot of thought into how people would interpret those things and form their own mental images. I don’t know if this is the first time you’ve considered the world this stuff was set in, but that was great.

You also are a very good —not quite great —storyteller. You move action well, and you maintain lyrical technique and unique turns of phrase, though not at the same level as when you have less plot-heavy content. Still, you’re good at telling the story, keeping the reader engaged. What you’re not as good at is figuring out where you want to take the reader. Here, you built up this spectacular world in a short space, then led us to an anti-conclusion that felt rushed. A little more exposition, either direct or indirect, would have helped us place what happened when your narrator took the truth serum.

Anyway, this story was rather impressive. You made me think for a second about my vote, which says a lot considering you were going against a top-level verse by this site’s best writer. You did a good job of building off the topic, but I think a more tonal and literal interpretation with the same level of storytelling and world-building would have been necessary for me to let that lead to my vote. You could have beaten most people this round —I’d say your verse was the sixth-best, off the top of my head. So there’s no shame here. It was a tough matchup.

Vote: dead man