Did you know it’s voting season? Has your head been so buried in books of poetry that you’re now looking up and quizzically wondering who it is people keep talking about running for President– is it Bronco Bama and Mount Tomney? (Dear god, I hope you’re not one of those mythical creatures– an undecided voter– newscasters believe really exist.)

The good people at Goodreads are hosting their 2012 Choice Awards. Goodreads, if you’re unfamiliar, is a social media network where users can talk about books, write reviews, and collect and categorize books they’ve read or want to read. It’s a place to publicly display your nerdy book-face separate from Facebook.

The 15 contenders for poetry are as follows:

CAConrad — A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New (Soma)tics  (Wave Books)

Eduardo C. Corral — Slow Lightning  (Yale University Press)

Sarah Kay — B  (The Domino Project)

Rebecca Lindenberg — Love, An Index  (McSweeney’s)

Eileen Myles — Snowflake/ different streets  (Wave Books)

Mary Oliver — A Thousand Mornings  (Penguin)

Emily Pettit — Goat in the Snow  (Birds LLC)

D.A. Powell — Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys  (Graywolf Press)

Michael Robbins — Alien vs. Predator  (Penguin)

Zachary Schomberg — Fjords Vol. 1  (Black Ocean)

Gregory Sherl — The Oregon Trail Is the Oregon Trail  (Mud Luscious Press)

Mark Strand — Almost Invisible (Knopf)

Natasha Trethewey — Thrall  (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

unauthor — The Unwords  (self-published)

Dana Ward — This Can’t Be Life  (Edge Books)

So yes, you’ve probably made up your mind about how to vote in the upcoming presidential and local elections, but why not spend some time deliberating and voting for a book of poetry? Head over to Goodreads to cast your vote.

— Sam Woodworth, Baltimore/D.C. Editor