And the Winner Is . . .

One entry for each poem. One entry for each comment. Yes Kate, I counted them all!

I wouldn't be able to sleep tonight (or maybe some night three months from now) if I cheated, but just in case you don't know me that well here's proof this was on the up and up:

Statistics work, people. The winners are . .

1. Ashley!
2. Mom! (actually, you won third as well, but this is one per customer)
3. Kate!
   

The prizes are . . .

• The Trouble with Poetry, Billy Collins
• The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
• 101 Famous Poems, ed. Roy J. Cook

Let me know your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd preferences, and I'll award accordingly.

You're all winners to me. And to prove it, a final offering (thanks Mom for the suggestion):

From "The Indications," Walt Whitman 1900

The words of the true poems give you more than poems,
They give you to form for yourself, poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, romances, and everything else,
They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes,	25
They do not seek beauty—they are sought,
Forever touching them, or close upon them, follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick.
They prepare for death—yet are they not the finish, but rather the outset,
They bring none to his or her terminus, or to be content and full;
Whom they take, they take into space, to behold the birth of stars, to learn one of the meanings,	30
To launch off with absolute faith—to sweep through the ceaseless rings, and never be quiet again.