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Winning Poems for January 2008 First Place A child's experience, in the child's voice, of being allowed to join in a lynching--the subject could easily turn cliched, but this poem manages to keep a hard light on the memory--the sour bile, the bottles in the tree. The scene comes vividly alive. The martin's nest, full of eggs, just above the head of the child throwing up witnessing the horror--is a brilliant focus for the poem. It's the martin's nest and the skillful control of rhythm that charms me, here. --Fleda Brown Second Place A tightly controlled, dense poem that in its language evokes the goose-step itself. I like the way this poem moves from the image of marching (under the fluorescent light, scarier still!) to all the ramifications of the love affair, from flamenco dancing, to wild sex, to the study of gravestones--all at the emotional pitch that the word Nazi implies. "She finds him aesthetic" says everything we need to know about their relationship, and about what can drive people into inhuman behavior. --Felda Brown Third Place I like the way this poem slips up on the sorrow, embedding it in the details before we understand its source. The Radio Flyer, the neighbor shifting dust/ to the street, the coworkers "pigging up their darling lives"--the images skillfully keep us one step away from the actual event, the one that matters. The poem stands in its length and its quatrains as testament to Emily Dickinson's poem that begins, "After great pain, a formal feeling comes." I am particularly fond of "The Cardiologist..."s last two lines, the way the poem ends with "cooled clay." --Felda Brown Honorable Mention Honorable Mention |
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