2008-2009 Parnell Poetry Prize Winner Announced

Patricia Savage has been selected as the 2008-2009 Parnell Poetry Prize winner by judge Ilya Kaminsky.

The following were finalists for the prize:

M. Lee Alexander, “Lane Bryant, 6 pm” and “The Foreclosure”
Evan Ernst, “Superman”
Claire Keyes, “Dulcinea”
Michelle Maher, “Early Summer”
Penelope Scambly Schott, “How to survive a fall through the ice” and “Fugitive Memory”
Nina Soifer, “In Julia Child’s Backyard”
Jean Tupper, “Eventually He Was Missing”
Roberta Visser, “Lines Written after Watching Kaddish: Music of Remembrance and Hope”
Matthew Williams, “i beg for rationalization”

The 2008-2009 Parnell Poetry Prize-Winning Poem:


Rewards
Eternity is in love with the productions of Time.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have considered heaven
All of us, hanging out,
No worries, time on our hands,
No clock to punch,
No kids to get through calculus and college,
No one falling into my arms,
Exhausted at day’s end.
No more longing simmering
Like a pot of tomatoes
On the back burner of my soul.

I have considered this life,
When I don’t back away from choice
Or stop loosing myself on a blank page
Or in the woods behind my house.
I keep risking all I have to love better,
To see things with new heart,
Staying with my breath, constant and steady.
I have not given up on wanting more
Out of nearly every day.

When I am done, I want to be all used up.
I want to be tossed in the air, scattered everywhere.
Dust,
Imperceptible but part of the
Huge space we call empty.