The Poetry Foundation would like to congratulate Juan Felipe Herrera and August Kleinzahler whose books “Half of the World in Light” and “Sleeping It Off in Rapid City” have both won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle award in poetry. This is the first time two poets have shared the award.
Learn how Herrera found his voice as a poet, and read some poems from his winning collection, “Half of the World in Light” here.
Read some poems that appear in Kleinzahler’s collection “Sleeping It Off in Rapid City” here.
Find out more about the NBCC winners in other categories, including Roberto Bolaño whose “2666″ won for fiction, here.
Thank you for these great links, Cathy.
Posted By: Francisco Aragón on March 13, 2009 at 12:12 pmReport this comment
Just to keep up my reputation as a pedant, in Kleinzahler’s title, “It” should be capitalized, “off” lowercased, while in Herrera’s “Is” should be capped. Doesn’t matter how small a word is, if it’s a pronoun or a verb, it should be capitalized. This is some sort of OCD problem I have, I know.
Posted By: michael robbins on March 18, 2009 at 12:59 amReport this comment
Before anyone else notices, I got the title of Herrera’s book wrong. I called it “Half the World is Light,” when clearly it is “Half of the World In Light.” That’s what I get for using the Washington Post blog instead of Amazon to fact check…
Posted By: Cathy Halley on March 18, 2009 at 10:02 amThe Chicago Manual of Style tells me I should use lowercase for prepositions unless they’re stressed. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t stress the “of” in Herrera’s title–neither do the good folks at NBCC who left the entire word out of the title on their site!
So, I’m sticking with “Half of the World in Light.”
As for the Kleinzahler–I guess I’ll go with “Sleeping It Off in Rapid City,” though I sure hate the way it looks.
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“Unless they’re stressed” makes sense to me — thus “Sleeping It Off” would work. But no one said “of” should be capitalized! Thank you for putting up with my solecism tic.
Posted By: michael robbins on March 18, 2009 at 10:39 amI actually think “Half the World Is Light” is a better title, whoever invented it. Meanwhile, maybe Harrieteers could advise me: is Herrera’s book all that? I saw Burt’s review in the Times, but I haven’t checked it out yet.
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