Nikki Moustaki, who took second place in last year's competition, is a
graduate student at the U. of Indiana at Bloomington. She wrote "Planned Disappearances." She tied with Melanie Almeder for first place.
Ms. Melanie Almeder, a graduate student from Micanopy, Florida, wrote "Mock Orange." She holds an MFA in Writing degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She tied with Nikki Moustaki for first place.
Nikki Moustaki, who took second place in last year's competition, is a
graduate student at the U. of Indiana at Bloomington. She wrote "Planned Disappearances." She tied with Melanie Almeder for first place.
Each of these two winners will receive $100, invited to read their entries at the Annual Luncheon, and inducted as Honorary Members of the Society, and their entries will be printed in a Society pamphlet and on the Society's website.
There was no second place winner.
There were two honorable mentions: "John Halley's Winters" by James McKenna of Augusta Maine and "Stigmata" by William Alatriste of New York City. Each of these two honorable mentions will be invited to read their entries at the Annual Luncheon, inducted as Honorary Members of the Society, and their entries will be printed in a Society pamphlet and on the Society's website, below.
Nearly five hundred poems were entered in competition for this year's W.B. Yeats Prize, a large number of very fine poems among them. Choosing from such plenitude was difficult, but in the end, two remarkable poems stood out from a large second group of work from which I could easily have selected a dozen poems worthy of Honorable Mention. Fearing that such a rash course of action might well bankrupt the Yeats Society, I have awarded only two Honorable Mentions, but would like to mention several other poems in this report, hoping to honor them in this lesser fashion. In reverse order, then, I will begin with these merit-worthy poems, and then move on to the official prize recipients.
Reading the entries, I was struck by how many of these poems set out to describe and catalogue the physical world-- whether rural Ireland or urban America-- reminding us again of what a great documentary medium poetry is. Poems like "Amtrak from Syracuse to Manhattan on a Mid-October Day" and "Picking up AIDS Results from a Clinic in Spanish Harlem" did a terrific job of depicting the big city in all its surly beauty. Congratulations, likewise, to the author of "Praise for My Son's Photographs of Harlan County" and "Pitching Out Eighty-Six Years," two fine poems which rendered the world of Depression-era Appalachia with a nostalgic grace that never yielded to sentimentality.
Also worthy of notice: "The Trace," which wove philosophy and life neatly together, ending with a memorable mouse trap "baited with sour havarti"; "Vikstol," a vivid portrait of Scandinavian immigrant life, replete with "cabbage-stalk soups" and "yellow sheets strung/ between skeletal fire escapes"; and "Water-Broke," written in a musical voice Yeats would certainly have approved of, with its "scrub- scun knees" and "wet burp of the bog." While not selected for Honorable Mention, these poems certainly deserve to be mentioned with honor.
Official Honorable Mention goes to two quite different poems. The first is "Stigmata," which I admired for its use of tattoos as an image on which to peg a consideration of death and permanence, what is erasable and what endures. The second Honorable Mention goes to "John Halley's Winters," a poem that links the old-fashioned formal virtues of rhyme with a modern pop culture eclecticism. I couldn't resist the crazy joy of the final lines of this offbeat poem:
Then each night he and Joe Creteau
painted shelves at the A&P.
Radio sang. Spring neared.
They swiped only German beers;
and ate the giant Fritos.
Co-winners of this year's prize are the poems "Mock Orange" and "Planned Disappearances." Splitting the prize in this contest is becoming something of a tradition; in doing so I follow in the footsteps of several previous such decisions by judge Eamon Grennan, not by plan but by coincidence. It was simply impossible for me to relegate either of these poems to second place, when they both seemed so admirable, and rang so loudly in my ear. Despite their anonymity, the voices of the two winning poets were unmistakable. This contest is judged blind, and even as of this writing I have no notion of the identities of the winning poets, but I had little difficulty spotting other strong poems written by the two co-winners. I was greatly impressed by the depth and range their authors' exhibited in these multiple works. Along with "Mock Orange," one winner wrote a moving historical meditation on the death of Wilfred Owen in elegant, unrhymed couplets. And the author of "Planned Disappearances" also wrote a canzone about slaughtering chickens, matriarchy and occult crystalography-- a technical tour de force in this most difficult of all patterned end-word forms.
The winning poems themselves share one dominant characteristic: language of great energy and originality. The poets take obvious delight in the naked power of words-- phlox and hissy-fit, cosmos and kumquat-- and utilize their great range of diction to charge the poems with wit and pathos at the same time. To differentiate the two, "Mock Orange" displayed great dexterity with metaphorical compression, beginning in the very first line: "Everything on the tongue goes stunned bird." And "Planned Disappearances" moves from its opening ironies to a darker brand of humor, as in the wonderful sentence that concludes the poem with absolute conviction:
We're a sick little family, naked, rolling on crackers in our bed; give unto us ham hocks in jelly, sour green peppers in Cajun sauce, okra and tomatoes, let us be anointed with the fattest green dollar bills, Crisco brand shortening, the light of living stars and cheap, sweet port wine, for we have asked for nothing and received much, for we have lain together with blood and garbage, under Mars, who is just a red speck you can wipe away like sneeze on a windshield.
So much for Mars. But poems as fine as these, it is my firm belief, are destined to endure.
Everything on the tongue goes stunned bird. Long past the hissy-fit thralls of April, rashes of phlox, purple thistle snowing a little. And then, like too much love, there was altogether too much gardenia in the huddled yards. The heat in a flick of wind picked itself up and dragged off, old dog, into the damp cane fields, bee drone, sighing, sighing of highway, hawks' cries. A screen door slammed lightly. A woman hummed nonsense to herself, The thousand burnt-orange camellias bent in rot, long past wisteria, long past bitter kumquat, past the sweet white ache of mock orange - it was not God, but those lithe lord gods themselves, mocking birds, intoning every other voiced thing from dirt-slicked limbs of Magnolias until, distracted, they tipped past the waxed leaves the sun makes silver of; not God, lord gods, regard, insistence, disregard.
Tonight Mars resurfaced, as if it was ever gone-
tonight I had my glasses on. I've missed
bigger planets than that.
I bought cream today that wanted to be butter;
I ran out of soap. Killed a sow. You can make butter from blood.
Lamentations: 4:3 "The daughter of my people
is become cruel, like the ostriches
in the wilderness." And why not? If the bed
ain't made for three,
stretch it. If the bed don't fit seven, make room on the floor.
Complaints will be tried with soap and blood. Wash thyself and thy city.
You're a filthy ostrich. Lamentations: 4:5:
"Those who ate dainties are deserted
in the streets"; may we all rejoice under Mars
'cause he's back and written
a book. He's been photographed all over town.
(There's ham in the fridge if you're hungry)
Soon he'll be gone, fifty-three years. That's how the sky works:
everyone gets a turn. It's what's so great about the cosmos.
What did Jesus think, and did he have time, between making birds
from tough Israeli clay and more-trout from some-trout to notice
Mars and his planned disappearances?
Typically insensitive of planet like that.
Perhaps: The red star is wandering again.
Lamentation: 3:15: "He has filled me
with bitterness"; boil blood, fill intestines, salt, gristle, sand, teeth.
Coagulation is like opening the camera's shutter to the sky,
time etches itself on the lens. We have records
of your movements When Mars screams, pretend
you can't hear it. There's six foks in my bed, a pig's head,
and everyone's greasy with duck liver and eggs.
We're a sick little family, naked, rolling on crackers in our bed;
give unto us ham hocks in jelly, sour green peppers in Cajun sauce,
okra and tomatoes, let us be anointed with the fattest
green dollar bills, Crisco brand shortening, the
light of living stars and cheap,
sweet port wine, for we have asked for nothing
and received much, for we have lain
together with blood and garbage, under Mars,
who is just a red speck
you can wipe away like sneeze on a windshield.
John falls from his salesman's fate
to the waterbed in the Super 8.
Now his is the weary sailor at rest.
No bulky wares, only a small sea chest.
And tight in his hammock he is casting off--
from cold calls and tight faces,
from Beth's divorce and all remorse,
toward distant shores of costless grace.
Now he knows. 1984 was best.
Dropped school, dated Beth.
Warm in Rob's ice house
he fished the Kennebec
and read his Dad's FIELD AND STREAM.
He dreamed.
Then each night he and Joe Creteau
painted shelves at the A&P.
Radio sang. Spring neared.
They swiped only German beers;
and ate the giant Fritos.
i
They were your true family.
The busty hula dancer crudely pricked
in bluegreen ink across a biceps somewhere
between Ceylon and Djibouti,
the hawk with gaudy wings spanning
your terminally flightless back,
and on your forearm the bruise colored heart with "MOM" beneath
in sturdy gothic script.
They meant more to you
than any of us, and in the months
before you left, these markers-
glyphs hidden from, the world
by long-sleeve shirts, and blindly loyal
to your body--began to multiply,
pucker along blank patches of skin,
began, colored scabs and all, to own you
in ways we never could.
ii
So much ink spent
making porous impressions
and not a letter,
nothing left
behind for us to
remember you by.
iii
Twice in one week I spot the punk
with tattooed face and lip-pins listing
at the checkout counter
of a London greengrocer's
with his plastic bags
of fruit and though the stippling
around the eyes is similar, it's still miles away
from the sharp smell of that airless tattoo
parlor in sweltering July,
the stringy, glass-beaded doorways
and ammoniaed floor making me retch so \
that you had every excuse
to slap the man
into me, and did, smoke steaming
from your nostrils as you swung.
There, while the Florida tide
came in bursting with legions of purple Men
of War that bit like
jellyfish (not
half as bad though
as the pinpricks bunched around softening
muscle, making you wince afterwards
in cloudless noontime sun),
I stared at a man preoccupied
with permanence, and watched him slowly
disappear beneath the gurr of
an ink tipped needle.
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