Literary prizes are, of course, deeply arbitrary in many ways; such is the nature of keeping score in a creative field. Nonetheless, our prizewinners post is compiled in the same spirit that one might tally up Cy Young Awards and MVPs to determine if a baseball player should be considered for the Hall of Fame. These awards nudge an author towards the “canon” and help secure them places on literature class reading lists for decades to come.
Millions founder C. Max Magee on The Prizewinners 2011/12

Devotion: The Garment District

By Bruce Smith

In bed as the machinery of morning begins, indistinguishable
the subterranean turbines of the A train from the jet engine
as it gins the clouds, rips and reseams the length of dungaree
on its way to Pittsburgh (with the terrible and subtle cargoes,
with ashes and a cat under the seat) from the pulleys
of the service elevators from the baffled sound across the alley
of the hand-iron press and the sewing machine motors whirring
bobbins that stitch together the hot properties of Seoul   
      and the suburbs
and the idiot village of Chelm, needle the veronica   
      and the Buddha robe
and the sateen for spring. I looked over at her. Her skin a warp
of Christ and a weft of meat. All night she had hauled me
and the boy and the smoky, feckless men I was across
the fens and stretches of mesquite through the tunnels
and delivered me to my misery and the laborious knots of the sheets
I wound myself in. And she was exhausted from Eros and swollen
from anger. She could stand to put on a few pounds. I could see it
in her ribs. Before I would marry my restlessness to her terror,
before the crushes and wages could be made into our equity, before
the endlessness would end in spinning jennies and sleaze   
      and the noise
of a fleet of vehicles with tinted windows testing   
      the evacuation routes,
I would cut, then peel, then dice, then caramelize some onions
before she wasted away to nothing.
***
As appeared in Poetry, January 2008.

Source: poetryfoundation.org

Hospital parking lot, April

By Laura Kasischke

Once there was a woman who laughed for years uncontrollably after a stroke.

Once there was a child who woke after surgery to find his parents were impostors.

These seagulls above the parking lot today, made of hurricane and ether, they

have flown directly out of the brain wearing little blue-gray masks, like strangers’ faces, full

of wingéd mania, like television in waiting rooms. Entertainment. Pain. The rage

of fruit trees in April, and your car, which I parked in a shadow before you died, decorated now with feathers,   

and unrecognizable   
with the windows unrolled   
and the headlights on   
and the engine still running   
in the Parking Space of the Sun.
***
As appeared in Poetry in October 2008. Click through for a flash file of Laura Kasischke reading this poem.

Source: poetryfoundation.org

  • 849 Plays
  • Excerpt from Yusef Komunyakaa
Download External Audio

fsgbooks:

To celebrate Yusef Komunyakaa’s nomination for the National Book Critics Circle Award, I thought I would share this recording from our poetry blog. I was fortunate enough to meet Komunyakaa a few years ago when recording this piece, and he was a consummate gentleman. It’s something of a bonus that he was born with an astounding reading voice.

Oh wow, just listen to him… Astounding voice indeed.

This makes me want to just post clips or poems from all of the NBCC poetry prize contenders.  Let’s think of it as an exteneded Sunday’s Poem?