"If you're a poet, it's easy to love poetry, which makes it difficult in the extreme to judge a contest like this one that has so many praiseworthy entries. But when I read a poem, the first question I ask myself is, do I want to read this poem again? (You can't do that with Moby-Dick or Macbeth, but you can re-read most poems right there on the spot; indeed, if the poems are any good, you have to.) Then I want to know, Is every part as good as the whole? After all, a great poem can be deflated by a flat ending or a wobbly middle or sometimes just a comma error. But then all art contains error, as the sages of the desert tell us, so finally I ask myself if the poem transcends its own frailties. In other words, I end up where I started: do I want to read this poem again?
The problem is that almost all the poems I read for this year's Emily Dickinson Award competition meet these criteria. Finally, though, I chose "Because We are Men." True, it's a manly poem, and I am a man. But his poem about warriors is, in a larger sense, about the victims of wars, and each of us is a victim of one conflict or another, from the domestic to the global (not to mention the most widespread fighting of all, the kind that takes place in our minds.) At the highest level, though, "Because We are Men" is about the oldest of literary themes, isolation, as well as isolation's opposite, connection. "Because We are Men is succinctly encyclopedic; it's just two pages long, but it covers the world. It has a sound as new as the terrifying events of September 11, yet its lines remind us that, as William Carlos Williams said, "It is difficult/to get the news from poems/yet men die miserably every day/for lack/of what is found there."
I also like "The Nuclear Family" because of the brainy, goofy way it combines family and geography in a way that makes both a lot more fun than they could ever be on their own. Finally, "Closing Time" is a poem that makes God more human and our fathers more hauntingly god-like; it's hard to imagine a topic more rewarding for either poem or reader.
As I say, all the poems are winners in one way or another. This year's poets honor me by allowing me to read them, and they honor poetry by continuing to pursue this most difficult, most rewarding craft."
