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Anthony Hecht of Washington, D.C.
Winner of the Frost Medal
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Late Afternoon: The Onslaught of Love
For William and Emily Maxwell
At this time of day
One could hear the caulking irons sound
Against the hulls in the dockyard.
Tar smoke rose between trees
And large oily patches floated on the water,
Undulating unevenly
In the purple sunlight
Like the surfaces of Florentine bronze.
At this time of day
Sounds carried clearly
Through hot silences of fading daylight.
The weedy fields lay drowned
In odors of creosote and salt.
Richer than double-colored taffeta,
Oil floated in the harbor,
Amoeboid, iridescent, limp.
It called to mind the slender limbs
of Donatello's David.
It was lovely and she was in love.
They had taken a covered boat to one of the islands.
The city sounds were faint in the distance:
Rattling of carriages, tumult of voices,
Yelping of dogs on the decks of barges.
At this time of day
Sunlight empurpled the world.
The poplars darkened in ranks
Like imperial servants.
Water lapped and lisped
In its native and quiet tongue,
Oakum was in the air and the scent of grasses.
There would be fried smelts and cherries and cream.
Nothing designed by Italian artisans
Would match this evening's perfection.
The puddled oil was a miracle of colors.
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Jean Valentine of New York, New York
Winner of the Shelley Memorial Award
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The Pen
The sandy road, the bright green two-inch lizard
little light on the road
the pen that writes by itself
the mist that blows by, through itself
the gourd I drink from in my sleep
that also drinks from me
—Who taught me to know instead of not to know?
And this penits thought
lying on the thought of the table
a bow lying across the strings
not moving
held
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Isabel Nathaniel of Dallas, Texas
Co-Winner of the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award
|
This is the eighth section of a long narrative poem, told in numbered parts
The Revelers
Look at the Pleiades tonight—
the Seven Sisters all done up
in glinting glamor,
their sheer almost-blue gowns
banded, belted in diamonds,
their tiny domain
on the bull's shoulder gaudied
for solstice festival,
gods, goddesses
and other glitterati attending,
buzzed and merry
and mingling.
Who's who is just beyond
easy visibility and moment
to moment everybody
shifts in and out of being seen,
a graceful game of deception
behind those swathes
of shivery veil the Sisters hung
for effect. Look slightly away
and see how it all gets
brighter, but still fabulously tangled,
how the characters (lovers,
villians and unsuspecting
victims) turn, return, refigure,
evoke, deny, beckon,
for our fascination.
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David Lloyd of Manlius, New York
Co-Winner of the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award
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the first of a series of sestinas
In the Courtyard of the High Priest
There's always what could have been, had we heard
different words back then. But as I am
I can't imagine being without the words
St. Peter spoke, furtive at the fire
in the courtyard, testing his almost-
willing spirit against irresolute flesh.
Before the guards' swords, what could the flesh
resolve? To rise above itself? Be heard
shouting its name no matter what? Almost—
but not quite. I do not know the man. I am
innocent, he shouted while guards stared, the fire
consumed, the dark relented. Just words,
after all. Nothing less or more than words
bartering anger for truth, this flesh
for any other gathered before the fire
without face or place or purpose in the herd.
In this courtyard the eternal "I am"
longs for its distant half: the almost-
present spirit, so familiar, so almost-
ready with those nearly-spoken words.
Ech of us is desperate to proclaim, I am
strong, my love defeats my trembling flesh,
my body rises, my voice will be heard
above confusions of sword and fire.
Here's love and loyalty, fear and lies, fire
and threat. Life's accumulated almosts
amounting to themselves: after he heard
the cock crow, all that remained were words—
and the dawn, the courtyard, the trembling flesh,
places in which to loath the self. I am
Peter whispered in that lonely place. I am
this frail thing. Another may shout, Bring on fire
and sword! Raise a cross and nail this flesh
to it! Bold words, yes. Courageous. But "almost"
is the word our great tower of words
rises to. If I listen well, I will hear
what I am, but also what I almost
rise above: fire and sword, and these words:
frail flesh, lonely flesh. That is what I heard.
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Rhina Espaillat of Newburyport, Massachusetts
Winner of the Cecil Hemley Memorial Award
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Marine Salvage Museum, Florida
Artfully scattered, rings, filigree, chain,
in sand meant to suggest the ocean floor
that cradled the lost galleon, far from Spain;
look at this helmet some young noble wore
who wore the contents out nodding assent
to every sea-change since; note that rich urn
now sealed with coral. What this wreckage meant
to eyes beseeching God for its return
we only guess. Of course, if we had eyes
like God's, we could see all the scenes forthwith:
the keel still crowned with birds, its green disguise
intact; gold still unhammered by the smith;
the lady hanging on the handsome neck;
four centuries of tides scouring the deck.
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Mary Jo Bang of New York, New York
Co-Winner of the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award
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So This
So, this is reality—a ghostscape in the afterstorm,
the lake lit whit e with lightning. A mouth open
in a yawn. Children, children, sit here. Near.
Louise and Lydia both wearing the same blue dress
trimmed with white ribbon, a bow on each shoulder.
The long-suffering dog lets Louise (as you can see
the taller by sight) sit on his back. She is his most beloved
and he is hers. A shoe, a sock, an arm
on the back of a sofa. So, reality. Wind and water.
Louise with her hair pulled back, Lydia with a veil.
Fruit and fish, a flat dish rimmed with seashells.
Maple leaf and myth. Ophelia.
The bed, the bottle, the dog, the cat, the elephant
blanketed red in a circular scene. And now—
the foot is lifted, the trunk is lofted, and sound
fills the air and now the pear tree, the Palais, de Pape,
the pool table. Lydia with a hat, Louise with a bat
and ball. A game of badminton, a day of croquet,
a crown of sonnets, or terrible thorns. Fruit
rimmed with seashells, a fish with two feet.
The long-suffering sofa. A circular scene: the bull enters
the ring. The myth of man's disobedience.
Louise on a lake, shoes light wet with white rain.
Lydia like Ophelia, her face in a flower. A frond.
A frond. A tangle of twos. A terrible knot.
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Stephanie Strickland of New York, New York
Co-Winner of the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award
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from There Is A Woman In A Conical Hat
1
If you understand virginity,
you understand abstraction, you understand V—
V which is flight, and you understand VVV,
2
i.e., ric-rac, the earliest recorded
symbolic motif, Cassiopeian breasts pouring forth
a Milky Way, a.k.a. zigzag,
3
world-over water, meander, serpentine
cupmark U adjoining its inverse, upsidedown
U (please imagine), yourself
4
optimizing, as you do not lift but leave
your point (become pointed) pressed hard
to bone to pull that bone
5
writhing on your point, twist it one way,
then the other—a rhythm method making
your water mark.
6
If you understand red, you understand ruby,
you understand light bubbling up struck seam
first morning cliff; you do not
7
mock the real
as you watch it subside and divide and then run
like morning into the virtual.
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Kathleen Peirce of Wimberly, Texas
Winner of the William Carlos Williams Award
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Two Sisters
There they are before desire went to them,
one preferring spring, when the smaller shapes
seem really willing to be seen, one preferring fall
for the yellow heaviness dragging over over-ripeness,
opening it before it leaves. These two are children.
One knows to sleep on top the other, fitting her cheek
against her thigh with a turned-out head,
knees hooked over the farther thigh, a ladle and tureen.
From her shoulders to her hips the smaller body crosses
her sister's open legs. The larger one has looked
at how she's crossed to magnify the feeling, and she'll
look again. She loves the spring. Her sister floats under
the arm draped over her and the cupped hand roving
her sleepy sleepy head where something opens and
divides and illustrates, divides and wants reverberation,
wants the floaty feeling after being touched by form,
then formlessness. She loves the fall.
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Lisa Lubasch of New York City
Winner of the Norma Farber First Book Award
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Oratorio
*
If I declare that is what I am to answer for (do I dare?), the generals and juries will come out from
their wine cellars (most with their wet-caps on) and cry, "That is enough! I have heard enough!" Insolent
prudes! Embellishing the past with your pale sympathies! Man will discover signs before he ever has
designs to read the sunset.
*
O empty flower. Breeder of life and of time. Suffer up your sadness like the bees.
*
I have no patience. I want to leave this life very quickly in order not to be barbered by its
*
Beauty is it legendary dead.Delinquent bird.
*
Slow hearse, (drifting) to the shore. Under the trudge-light, (death), the lesser phantom.
*
Does not some slender pole of reason still remain? Fancy is the feed-worm of the heart.
*
Dear, that pitiful sloth which you call verse, etcetera. Down with the hatchet! The evil path of
ecstasy doth never
allow.
*
Let us all murder one another.
*
Il n'y a que ces deux aspects—la raison et l'infini.
*
O single censured soul. Time is the miserable organ of time.
*
The eternal watchman has his charm. Surtout quand il me dit, "je me sens rejeté par la vie."
*
ou« Personne ne m'attend. Personne. »
*
O vile and sophisticated burglars of the night.These are all my incantations!
*
Of a sun that searches out its prey, then buries it, I say "Deceptive sunlight! Implacable sidewalk!
(Barren amour)."
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Glori Simmons of San Francisco, California
Winner of the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award
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Angola Fields
The grasses quickly forget their slaughter,
the seasons dressing them brightly
as a girl in a cotton dress.
They blossom, they leaf, they entice.
At sunrise, the Left Behind lock
their orphans safe into the train station shell,
listening for the ghosts reborn
light-footed in the clover—
Little Moses who crawled into the reeds
to eat from the exotic bowl
or the leathered couple forever stooped
to finger a dried sycamore.
They gather their limbs for warmth.
Each phantom bone reaches into the land's
full trap, never wanting again.
They grow into oak, into hemlock, into fern.
Each day the living clear a path further
through the sulfur stars. Soon they will arrive
away from here and their lost parties.
Already they see through fewer eyes.
Once they walked barefoot. Now they wear
a foot in their shoes, an arm in their sleeves.
Their bodies are stools they come to rest upon.
They take them off to dream at night.
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Yerra Sugarman of New York, New York
Winner of the George Bogin Memorial Award
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Beaujolais
In my closet her corduroy dress—a burgundy you could say, a Beaujolais. My shadow leaves
me in night's feudal shoe, where even the periodic table can rest. But I'm ruddy-eyed, sleepless.
Furrowed fields of my hands, my mother's jumper was Beaujolais. The blinds rake and sway.
The catalpa tree throws its beans at me. Beans to you! Memory will lay down its acetylene
torch Torturers, doubters, killers: peak not. May welders of recollection solder tears of you.
As life walks me dumb on its leash, I will dig for her, although I have no paws—just a pin.
Insouciant skinny shadow, which covenants break tonight? her jumper was a rose madder
you could say, with a dread need for its dusty gullies to be swept. Tomorrow I will dig 55
years. On my chest she is still young and leans on a dirty stone lion somewhere in France,
with the head cracked in two. Mornings my mother was loath to rise. The pomp of her sun-
lit windows frightened her. I had not wanted to love her life. I did not want to pity her.
I'll look up love. I'll look up pity. I'll look up keep. I will not put words in my mouth.
All of Europe is Beaujolais. I will dig for my mother tomorrow with a pin. Where is my pin?
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Jeffrey Harrison of Andover, Massachusetts
Winner of the Lyric Poetry Award
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Rowing
How many years have we been doing this together,
me in the bow rowing, you in the stern
lying back, dragging your hands in the water—
or, as now, the other way around, your body
moving toward me and away, your dark hair swinging
forward and back, your face flushed and lovely
against the green hills, the blues of lake and sky.
Soon nothing else matters but this pleasure,
your green eyes looking past me, far away,
then at me, then away, your lips I want to kiss
each time they come near me, your arms that reach
toward me gripping the handles as the blades
swing back dripping, two arcs of droplets
pearling on the surface before disappearing.
Sometimes I think we could do this forever,
like part of the vow we share, the rhythm
we find, the pull of each stroke on the muscles
of your arched back, your neck gorged and pulsing
with the work of it, your body rocking
more urgently now, your face straining with something
like pain you can hardly stand—then letting go,
the two of us gliding out over the water.
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Michael Ward of Spokane, Washington
Winner of the Louise Louis/Emily F. Bourne Student Poetry Award
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America®
because it is the song of myself,
i sing the song of America.
along her river,
the mill wheel was grinding,
i went seeking and finding
to the library amid the sewers.
i read the books, failed the tests,
withstood the looks and the jests
"o my son, it is time for Responsibility" they tell me
and yet
i fear the Future where my feet shall be fed to the
fulcrum of Industry
as a boy i glued my pupils to Captain
America:
"sometimes the Red skull wins but usually the Green
goblin"
my peers fought for footballs and females,
painted by number, thought in unison,
and wrote poetry by formula {
Under-
Neath
Interior,
Ford®
Occasionally
Raises n(umbers)ihilism of
Mor(t)ality
}
but i read the books.
three million miners extracted energy from nothing
two million more connected springs with
sprockets to load the breech
one hundred sat in chairs in offices counting money
("but usually the Green goblin")
and on a pedestal, soft white hands in gray coat,
Lord Keynes spake: "we must pretend to
ourselves that
fair = foul, foul = fair (like happy lambs to
glorious)
for foul is useful and fair is not
Usury and Avarice and Precaution must
be our Holy Trinity for longer"
for humanity, there is a certain
Happiness in un(ex)I(ploy)Ty®(tation)
Get Beanies® @
McDonald's®
I too sing America®
and myself,
because America 'tis of me.
(soldiers raising [banner]clicking mouse)
on a pedestal, through the nimbus
Lord Gates speaketh "Ein World, Ein
Net (we're trapped)
we m(ight)ay spread i(gnor)nforma(nce)shun
to All "
along the banks of the river,
the mill wheel was grinding
the Big Mac was rite of passage
the teachers were rolling dice
the Admission Officer was drawing names from
his helmet
the students were sentenced to death by
circumlocution
{Governor: "were I would object alas polls speak
'no' . . . "}
i was using the passive voice (no-no)
"y la vida no es noble, ni buena, ni sagrada."
"oh my industrial darling,
were I would take you from the New Los City
and you can see the moon for once and stars because
there was never time nor profit to see them before.
you and i,
we cover our scars with asphalt and ribboncutting,
we measure our days by wages,
our years by deadfamily.
we bury our loved ones in fields where
they may see 180° of Heaven.
someday, when the cogs fall into decay,
we shall meet there, you and i,
and over the grave we shall be reborn
no building, scrape, Big Mac, obstruction, efficient
death,
just f(l)at empty"
my name is mike and i am the outside
my glasses are too thick, my arms too thin
i walk 40 minutes to school everymorning
i have no car and no job and i don't want these
my grades mean nothing, scores even less
i don't feed the blind, play tennis or chess
but sometimes, whetheworld is rushing aroundme,
i write poems without pen, carving images inside my
forehead,
so that i may look at myself when i please.
i sing the song of America
because it is the song of myself
her(my) amber waves of grain to parkinglot
["for without parkinglot there can be no starbucks
and Progress"]
beat plowshares to pistons,
beat compassion to efficiency.
a mallady without recognition,
a melody without variation,
i sing the song of america
and it is a dirge
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Jean Balderston of New York, New York
Co-Winner of The Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award
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Dickinson Weather
Snow is another country.
Where snow light fills a room
the hyacinth burns bluer.
A stillness like a swoon
swathes air in alabaster.
The soul in such surround
becomes as almond
blanched to bone,
a lozenge in the palm
where flake unfurls a firmament
and firmament a calm.
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Dolores Hayden of Guilford,Connecticut
Co-Winner of The Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award
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Language of the Flowers
Affection, jonquils can bespeak,
red tulips, Love. Strategic, meek,
she shears some lilies for her carafe,
adds jasmine sprays to telegraph
hesitant Sensuality,
plan pleasures neighbors need not see.
A full-blown rose, Meet Me Tonight,
placed over two buds, warns Secret Flight.
Lush honey suckle may confuse,
Since Bonds of Love might still refuse
if she's twined sprigs of dark green holly,
Foresight, with columbine for Folly.
And if some love has proven false,
fallen for a friend, or worse . . .
it's lovelia, Malevolence,
dark-stemmed blue buds, small ones. She's tense,
troubled, teary with dismay.
She adds no card to this bouquet,
dead leaves spell Melancholy, season
favors sour whortleberry, Treason.
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