We had a lot of great entries in the Book Spine Poetry Contest. First, I want to thank everyone who participated! I hope you enjoyed playing as much as I enjoyed seeing your poems. Second, as promised, here are all the entries (listed in no particular order) so you can all enjoy them, too. I’ve transcribed the lines of the poems in the captions in case you have difficulty reading some of the spines in the photos.
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Three from Lauren Nagel:
Know your own mind
Thesaurus
The elements of grammar
Me talk pretty one day
Get lucky
Can’t wait to get to heaven
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from Paula Billups:
Goatwalking
Pathways to bliss
Beyond good and evil
My world and welcome to it
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from Maia Almeida-Amir:
Living in the end times
Utopia
Our history is still being written
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from Cindy Clayton (who also provided with her entry a text version with her intended punctuation, so I’ll use that for the caption):
A thousand splendid suns.
The lake of dreams,
The summer tree—
Everyone is beautiful.
.
The rest of life:
Something rotten.
Crime and punishment,
Truth and consequences—
The places that scare you.
.
I am the messenger:
Good omens!
The wake of forgiveness.
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from Laine Little (entitled “Raising My Teen”):
Lost
The last battle
Between parent and child
No more misbehavin’
Celebration of discipline
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There you have it! If you sent me an entry and don’t see it here, I apologize. Please email me right away so we can sort it out.
Now, part of the reason it took me so long to get this post done has to do with my being out of town for a few days during an unusually busy time at school and having to play catch-up all week. But part of it is that, frankly, I can’t really decide who has won! So many of these poems are just fantastic.
So I’m putting the fate of this contest in your hands, dear readers. Below is a poll in which YOU decide which are the best entries! The poems are listed by their first lines. Polling will be open until the evening of Monday, May 20th. I’m going to try and set this up so you can vote each day, if you want to, to make this sort of like approval voting. First, second, and third place entries will win a prize! Winners will be announced the week polling ends.
Thank you for voting! Please spread the word to others to do so.
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Sappho's Torque 
I’m glad I didn’t go in for this. Knowing my sense of humour I’d have done something with “The Women’s Room” and “Ring of Bright Water”!
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That would have been great. 🙂 We’re all for senses of humor.
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Actually – damn! – why didn’t I enter with my two own book titles?
I am not a fish
Naked in the Sea
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Oh, that would’ve been great! Ah well, next time. 🙂
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Kinda too late, actually, 😦
http://mairibheag.com/2013/05/13/book-spine-poetry/
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Pingback: Book Spine Poetry Competition | Sulphuric
And note this is approval voting, so you can vote more than once. 🙂
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This is genius!
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Ian’t it great? I wish I could take even an ounce of credit for the idea! And thanks for the RT. 🙂 I love all these poems!
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Pingback: you do doodle too
This is nothing like Approval Voting. It’s more like cumulative voting. Your best strategy is to vote for the same option every day; i.e. it fails the Favorite Betrayal Criterion.
Approval Voting gets its strength specifically from the fact that you can vote for as many options as you want.
Clay Shentrup
Co-founder, The Center for Election Science
http://www.electology.org
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You actually can vote for as many options as you want. You are not limited to just one overall. You just have to go through the poll each time you want to vote for a different option.
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