Last year I was literally on the edge of my seat waiting for the National Book Award results since Linda Gregerson was in the running (thus far the only person I have ever personally known who was up for such an award. I worked with her in the MFA program at UofM). This year, however, it kind of went by unnoticed. If it wasn't for an article in the New York Times I might have missed the results completely.
Still, I was glad to see Mark Doty win the 2008 National Book Award for Poetry for Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems (2008 HarperCollins). Doty is a fantastic poet and a really nice guy. I had the good fortune of being able to interview him several years ago for Between The Lines (it's a gay paper. He's a gay poet. See? Makes perfect sense).
The other books in the running were:
Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival (2008 Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Reginald Gibbons, Creatures of a Day (2008 Louisiana State University Press)
Richard Howard, Without Saying (2008 Turtle Point Press)
Patricia Smith, Blood Dazzler (2008 Coffee House Press)
The only one of these poets I can say with any certainty I have ever read anything from is Frank Bidart, so I am curious to check out the others.
The poetry judges were Robert Pinsky (who has some good poems but wrote a book about prosody that I despise), Mary Jo Bang (whose poetry makes zero sense to me), Kimiko Hahn (who I have never heard of), Tony Hoagland (one of my favorites), and Marilyn Nelson (whose name rings a bell).
It's cool to see some small presses in the running, even if the cover of Blood Dazzler by Coffee House Press looks like it was originally designed for a self-published children's book about Creationism. Coffee House Press, by the way, also published my friend and colleague Raymond McDaniel's two books of poetry, Murder, A Violet and Saltwater Empire, the later of which I purchased and gave to said author to sign very shortly after it was published. That was over seven months ago. I still don't have the book. I've asked him about it, many times, and he claims that it's difficult to sign a book for someone he knows and likes, or something like that. If it's any easier for him, a signed check for $16 would work at this point, too. He wouldn't even have to write anything on the memo line if it's too much pressure.
2 comments:
Even in your bitterness, you are too good of a poet friend not to link to Ray's books.
--Amanda
OK, I just want to say that I looked all over your poet list and I'm not on it which means either you don't consider me a poet or you think I'm an awful poet and both of those answers however absurd are completely unforgiveable.
Just so you know, I've got my eye on you.
Signed,
Anonymous
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