Read more about the NBAs here.

From the PSA website, here’s Rodney Jones on the collection:

What a civil, undomesticable, and heartening poet is Mary Ruefle: fond of experiment, but just as pleased to write of tilapia or county fairs; always novel, but never pandering to a mode; refusing neither the absurd nor the sublime. Any Ruefle poem is an occasion of resonant wit and language, subject to an exacting intelligence. For more than thirty years, she has freshened American poetry by humbly glorifying both the inner life and the outward experience. Her Selected Poems, like the work of William Carlos Williams, is a testimony not only to the power of artfulness, but to human empathy.

The Poetry podcast, a monthly conversation about the magazine with the editors, has just won a National Magazine Award for Digital Media.

The American Society of Magazine Editors and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism give out the awards, called the Ellies in honor of the Alexander Calder stabile “Elephant” presented to the winners. Poetry was nominated along with Harvard Business Review, the New Yorker, Slate, and Tablet. This is the second ASME nomination for the Poetry Foundation; in 2010, the Chicago Poetry Tour was a finalist in the category of “Multimedia Feature or Package.” The awards, sponsored by ASME in association with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, are regarded as the “most prestigious in the magazine industry,” according to the New York Times.

Subscribe to the podcast here.

C.D. Wright’s One with Others is a crucial book, and not just in the way that we often say the work of a major poet is “important,” like because it stirs up some of the old dust in the isolated room of poetry, maybe cleans things up enough to let some light peek in through a window. No, it’s not just that. With this book, an account, equal parts poetry and journalism, of a charged moment in the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South, Wright kicks down a wall that it turns out divided poetry from nonfiction. She’s developed a new form, if not a new genre, that allows for a new blending of fact and feeling, one which could help us tell our stories going forward, if only we’ll let it school us.

via the Washington Post.

The Waste Land and Other Poems
by John Beer (Canarium Books)

Thin Kimono
by Michael Earl Craig (Wave Books)

Romey’s Order
by Atsuro Riley (University of Chicago Press)

R’s Boat
by Lisa Robertson (University of California Press)

Come On All You Ghosts
by Matthew Zapruder (Copper Canyon Press)

Read more about the prize—and the finalists—at the Believer hq.

A number of the posts so far address the relative obscurity their subjects have fallen into since the days when each was celebrated, but even Williams and Wallace Stevens who remain well within the canon don’t have contemporary publishers for their prize-winning collections. On Archibald MacLeish, John Murillo wrote:

Reading Archibald MacLeish’s Collected Poems brought a new favorite poet into my life. It also gave me even more reason to question the criteria by which some poets are canonized while others go ignored for years. With three Pulitzer Prizes and a National Book Award to his name, MacLeish was clearly celebrated in his day. But how is it that after a four-year undergraduate liberal arts education, an MFA in creative writing, and countless conversations with other poets about influences and issues of craft—some insanely erudite poets, I might add—I’m only now learning about this important poet and his contribution to American letters? Someone should have pulled my coat a long time ago. Archibald MacLeish is the truth!

I’ll let you in on a little secret: When we poets were asked to blog and assigned our NBA winners, we damn near shut down the internet with all the backchannel trading that went on. “Hey, can I get William Matthews from you?” “Sure, only if you give up Lucille Clifton.” “Damn. Okay, but how about…” For the life of me, I couldn’t get anyone to take Archibald MacLeish off my hands no matter who I offered up in exchange. Good thing. Had I not read him, I’d have missed out on so so much, both as reader and writer. The old dude has a lot he can teach us.

Dr. Maya Angelou. Out of a youth marked by pain and injustice, Dr. Maya Angelou rose with an unbending determination to fight for civil rights and inspire every one of us to recognize and embrace the possibility and potential we each hold.

With her soaring poetry, towering prose and mastery of a range of art forms, Dr. Angelou has spoken to the conscience of our nation. Her soul-stirring words have taught us how to reach across division and honor the beauty of our world.

“It was the longest it took for me to translate a poem,” said Racz, who has contributed more than 300 translations of Spanish-language poems to journals and anthologies, “because I had to maintain the numerical value of each line in translation as well as the rhyme while also retaining the meaning of the poem.” It was necessary for Racz to get the translation and numerical value correct because the sum of the lines total 1847, a year that was historically significant in Acuña de Figueroa’s poem.

The winning collection, White Egrets, was described by the chair of judges, poet Anne Stevenson, as “moving and technically flawless”.

“It took us not very long to decide that this collection was the yardstick by which all the others were to be measured. These are beautiful lines; beautiful poetry,” she said.

Walcott was last the subject of newspaper headlines in 2009, when he withdrew from the election for the post of Oxford professor of poetry after dossiers detailing allegations he had sexually harassed former students were sent to academics.

Anne Carson. Nox. New Directions


Kathleen Graber. The Eternal City. Princeton University Press 


Terrance Hayes. Lighthead. Penguin Poets


Kay Ryan. The Best of It. Grove


C.D. Wright. One with Others: [a little book of her days]. Copper Canyon

Read more about the award and the finalists here.

But in my own experience, poetic talent generally doesn’t make itself known either through agents, or through the efforts of the poets themselves: mostly you become aware of it by the stir the poems themselves create. So well-connected is the community of poets that you’re never more than two or three degrees of separation from Seamus Heaney. For a real new talent, even one casual appearance at the most obscure local workshop, or a single poem posted online, or sent to another poet, will be enough to link it to this network; you really have to work at being a recluse of a rare and dedicated variety to avoid being on the radar.

New media tools and blogs have helped a great deal, too, though Paterson does bemoan the “too many anonymous others which resemble farty wee boys’ gang-huts, and where membership is conditional on hating the right people.” Highlighting blogs and publishers that he considers “responsible and informative” in promoting new work, Paterson considers the Picador Prize an extension of the exposure process the network is already facilitating.

All the best efforts of other poets, however, can do little to sway an editor who’s too caught up in his own aesthetics or taste to give the new guys a chance, and this is where Paterson and his colleagues come in, taking great pains to do away with rigged selections, egos, and seemingly objective but diluted consensus-by-committee.

Well – with the best will in the world, there’s always a danger that an editor will end up with a list that reflects only their own narrow predilections, even though we’re all convinced we’re exercising our infinitely rich taste and discrimination. Everyone is their own blindspot. As the years go by, you take more and more advice from those whose opinion you trust (especially younger poets and critics; any middle-aged editor who doesn’t talk to poets in their 20s about the contemporaries they’re reading is in danger of publishing only young poets who sound like the now-middle-aged ones they grew up with).

According to the Foundation’s Director of Programs, Leslie Shipman, who developed the program along with Executive Director Harold Augenbraum and Program Manager Rebecca Keith,“This look back at our list of Poetry Winners allows us to examine the ways in which American poetry has evolved over the past sixty years, more than a century beyond the wellsprings of Dickinson and Whitman, into the multiplicity of passions it represents today. For some it is merely a list of poets whom we now consider canonical; for others it is a document of exclusion along aesthetic, gender, and racial lines. The Foundation hopes to spark a spirited discussion of where American poetry has been, where it is now, and where it might be headed as we enter a new age of possibility for this most ancient form of expression.”

The first essay, on 1950 winner William Carlos Williams, will go up February 14th to kick off the daily blog. Bloggers for the series include:

• Dilruba Ahmed
• Megan Snyder-Camp
• Scott Challener
• Ross Gay
• John Murillo
• Katie Peterson
• Kiki Petrosino
• Patrick Rosal
• Evie Shockley
• Lee Pinkas, editor of Cellpoems
• Saara Myrene Raappana, editor of Cellpoems
• Christopher Shannon, editor of Cellpoems
• Eric Smith, editor of Cellpoems

Sholl and about fifty other members from across Maine’s arts community descended upon Longfellow Square in Portland at the same time as Governor Paul LePage’s inauguration. Standing in the shadow of Maine’s best known poet, they read and recited poems as a way to send a message that the arts are an important part of the state, and a big draw for visitors and residents alike.

At a time when the arts are viewed by some politicians as a waste of money, it’s nice to see a community effort to highlight the importance of artistic production to the larger culture:

Once we saw the poetry piece was removed from the inauguration, we decided to do something at the same time to celebrate and put the focus back on poetry,” explained Joshua Bodwell, executive director of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. “The value of poetry and poets is not a monetary value, so I can’t imagine it was a big budget item to have poetry. Sometimes I think we need to be reminded that we need to celebrate things, because life is so busy.”

Unlike other countries, Scotland has yet to make any distinctions about what the post would officially entail, which would effect both the choice of poet, and whether the poet would choose to accept the honor.

There had been no public discussion about whether it would be a “working” role or purely honorary. [Robyn] Marsack said some poets would relish a time-limited appointment; others would be ideal if it involved visiting schools and promoting poetry to new audiences; while some very popular poets could be great ambassadors even if they were not technically the best.

The UK’s poet laureate, now Carol Ann Duffy, also a Scot, is appointed for 10 years and receives an honorarium of £5,750 a year. In New Zealand, the laureate produces a book of work at the end of his or her tenure.

Marsack, the director of the Scottish Poetry Library and chair of the Literature Forum for Scotland, feels strongly that in order to do justice to the process, it must be transparent for the public as well as for the poets themselves. Her belief that no one should be throwing around names until Scotland decides what exactly is being named hasn’t slowed the speculation any.

Duking it out at the top of the list to succeed him as makar are Don Paterson and Robin Robertson… But this is by no means a two-horse race. John Burnside’s darkly shadowed poems blend nature and philosophy across sinuously musical lines; Jackie Kay’s expansive, compassionate voice runs through all her writing; Kathleen Jamie’s superb book of essays, Findings, proves her credentials as Scotland’s foremost landscape writer. Last but not least are the reigning mother and father of Scottish poetry, Douglas Dunn – whose work encompasses both the political and, in 1985′s Elegies, the deeply personal – and Liz Lochhead, who has spent nearly half a century investigating politics, gender and place in lubricious, lyrical verse.

American poet Elyse Fenton has been awarded this year’s £30,000 ($48,000) University of Wales Dylan Thomas Prize for Clamor, her striking collection of 21st century war poetry.

Clamor, which was written in part while Fenton’s husband was deployed as a medic in Baghdad, is the first book of poetry ever to have won the title. She is the third person to have picked up the award, following Australian Nam Le with The Boat in 2008 and Welsh Rachel Trezise with Fresh Apples in 2006.

Ultimately, it’s the judges who decide the outcome of America’s top literary awards. Some are well known — Cornelius Eady and Linda Gregerson in poetry, Sallie Tisdale and Blake Bailey in nonfiction and Andrei Codrescu and Carolyn See in fiction.

It’s a tough job, as William Gass, the great novelist and sometime judge tells us:

“The giving of prizes is a notoriously chancy business. Look at the mistakes the Nobel committee has made. Or shall we amuse ourselves by listing the important works the National Book Awards missed. … Any award-giving outfit is doomed by its cumbersome committee structure to make mistakes, to pass the masters by in silence and applaud the apprentices, the mimics, the hacks or to honor one of those agile surfers who rides every fresh wave . . . ”

Previous National Book Award gatherings were held at a Times Square hotel with big-name hosts such as Steve Martin were a dim memory in the cacophonous Cipriani banquet hall on Wall Street with second-tier comedian Andy Borowitz.

He stepped off on the wrong foot from the get-go, comparing the American publishing industry to that crippled cruise liner wallowing off the Mexican coast. Did anybody tell him his audience was the publishing industry gathered to celebrate itself? It was not amused, and Mr. Borowitz was forced to apologize later.

Sounds like fun!

Iconic rocker Patti Smith has won the National Book Award for nonfiction for “Just Kids,” her memoir of her close relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe. The win took many by surprise.

There was another surprise at the National Book Awards, held Wednesday night at Cirpriana Wall Street in New York City. Instead of being awarded to one of the big-name nominees (Peter Carey, Nicole Krauss), the fiction award went to Jaimy Gordon, whose book “Lords of Misrule” was published by McPherson & Co., a small independent press.

Poetry winner Terrance Hayes, who has been the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, can add National Book Award to his list of literary achievements. His poetry collection is “Lighthead.”

Read poems from Hayes here, check out his Harriet posts here, and watch a video of Hayes discussing poetry and Pittsburgh here.

There might be a revolution going on in American poetry, but like most things that happen in American poetry, nobody really knows about it. It won’t make CNN, and definitely not Newsweek, but this spring, after the publication of Katherine Larson’s Radial Symmetry, Louise Glück, Adjunct Professor of English and the Rosencranz Writer-in-Residence at Yale, will step down, after nearly a decade, as the judge of the Yale Younger Series of Poets.

It’s really not surprising that this isn’t a big deal. It’s poetry, which no one reads anyway, and it’s a first-book competition, so none of the winners are famous. It doesn’t come as a shock for anyone with a subscription to Publisher’s Weekly—or any other magazine, for that matter—to hear that poetry is, generally, no longer news in American culture.

And yet the fact is that an astonishing number of poets who went on to great prominence and lasting influence began their careers as Yale Younger Poets. Muriel Rukeyser, Adrienne Rich, W.S. Merwin, John Ashbery, James Tate, Jack Gilbert, Robert Hass—any “Who’s Who” of American poetry over the past century would have to mention at least a handful of the contest’s winners . . .

Christian Campbell Running the Dusk (Peepal Tree Press)

Robert Dickinson Micrographia (Waterloo Press)

Sheila Hillier A Quechua Confession Manual (Cinnamon Press)

Katharine Towers The Floating Man (Picador Poetry)

Sam Willetts New Light for the Old Dark (Cape Poetry)

Tony Williams The Corner of Arundel Lane and Charles Street (Salt Publishing)

The Guardian considers the list conventional, and sees Cambell as the one to break new ground:

Lastly, there’s Christian Campbell. Campbell is from the Caribbean but his canvas is global. From Oxford – or as he dubs it, Oxfraud, to the Bahamas to Brixton, Campbell is a poet of diaspora, his language ranging from patois, “You 10, I six, jujube/ Now in season”, to the philosophical: “I wondered/ If we could also lynch words.” Campbell is a diverse poet, rooted, but reaching out to touch the world. Campbell is the least parochial of these poets, and his explorations of the complexities of identity herald a path for 21st-century poets to make their own.

Graber is the kind of poet who thinks out loud, though not in the tricky, needley way of John Ashbery, but like someone very smart and very well-read trying to get to the bottom of every troubling and exciting thought.  She thinks about her day to day life, family and friends, their every day goings on, their deaths and big tragedies, and she thinks about big ideas–life, death, meaning–mostly in the same poem.  She name-checks some of the big figures of Western thought–Marcus Aurelius and Walter Benjamin, for instance–but does so as if she were talking to or about friends.  She manages to do a scholar’s work in these poems without the alienating haughtiness of many scholars.

Next, Amazon’s Best Books of 2010 list came out today, and among the editors’ picks was Kay Ryan’s The Best of It: New and Selected Poems and Gjertrud Schnackenberg‘s Heavenly Questions. Let’s call it Amazon’s %2 solution for the literary scene.

Matt Donovan, poetry. His first collection, “Vellum,” was published by Mariner/Houghton Mifflin in 2006. He lives in Santa Fe, N.M.

Jane Springer, poetry. Her first poetry collection, “Dear Blackbird,” was published by University of Utah Press in 2007. She lives in Clinton, N.Y.

LB Thompson, poetry. Her poetry chapbook is entitled “Tendered Notes: Poems of Love and Money.” She lives on the North Fork of Long Island, has completed a poetry collection and is at work on a book of essays and a novel.

More from the Guardian:

Chair of the judges Anne Stevenson praised “an exceptional year for poetry, with a record number of entries”, and said that the judges had “agreed on a strong shortlist which is unusually eclectic in form and theme.”

The TS Eliot prize, now in its 18th year, carries with it a £15,000 first prize, together with £1,000 awards for all the shortlisted authors. The richest prize in British poetry, it has been described by Andrew Motion as “the prize most poets want to win”.

From the Guardian: 

After receiving the £1,000 award at last night’s British Academy cermony, Armitage shared his thoughts on the win. “I’m not sure if it’s possible to be a Romantic poet anymore, but more and more poets seem to be turning their eye towards nature – to the necessity of its otherness,” he said. “It’s hard to explain, but speaking personally, if the birds and the moors and the trees and the ice disappeared, then I would have no interest in writing about a city street, and probably no purpose as a poet.”

Romantic indeed!

Poetry

Kathleen Graber, The Eternal City
Princeton University Press

Terrance Hayes, Lighthead
Viking Penguin

James Richardson, By the Numbers
Copper Canyon Press

C.D. Wright, One with Others
Copper Canyon Press

Monica Youn, Ignatz
Four Way Books

Publisher’s Weekly has more.

Stem cells are a hot topic in the courts right now, but they also turn out to make a nice subject for poetry. This year the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine held a Stem Cell Awareness Day poetry contest, which garners 18 entrants from six countries and six states.

Each finalists received a framed stem cell image of their choice from CIRM’s Flickr web site.

And of course nothing involving stem cells can be without controversy: Did one of the winners get pulled because it was blasphemous?

From the Bookseller:

The septuagarian was awarded the £10,000 award last night (6th October), the eve of National Poetry Day. Chair of judges Ruth Padel said: “Human Chain is a collection of painful, honest, and delicately weighted poems. It is a wonderful and humane achievement.”

Conferred by the Culture Ministry, the award is accompanied by a 20,000-euro ($29,200) cash prize and presented to the best work of poetry published in Spain in any of the Iberian nation’s official languages.

The panel of judges kept in mind “the extraordinary modernity” of the poetry of Millares, who began publishing in the 1940s, and “that today it fully maintains its vigor and its supremacy as innovative poetry.”