Spring 2008 Paul Rice Poetry Broadside Winner Announced
The Coastal Carolina English Department is pleased to announce the winner of the fourth Paul Rice Poetry Broadside Series Contest, a competition open to currently enrolled Coastal Carolina students.
Our final judge, poet Patrick Phillips of Drew University, selected "Phoenix" by Stephanie Bouzounis as the winner. Stephanie will receive a $100.00 gift certificate to the Coastal Carolina bookstore and 25 copies of the broadside, which will be produced by the end of the semester in an edition of 100 numbered copies. Please join me in congratulating Stephanie on her winning poem.
Phillips also awarded honorable mention to Melissa Comparato’s "Death Across America" and Brett Stout’s "I will never win a contest like this unless someone digs up the corpse of William S. Burroughs and gives him a voice."
Although he was asked merely to select a winner and two honorable mentions from the entries, Phillips generously commented upon his selections:
Winner: "Phoenix."
There is so much that I like about this poem: the rich, alliterative music of its lines, the highly effective use of rhyme, the circular structure, and above all the haunting tone. It reminds me at once of the terse economy of Emily Dickinson and the eerie power of Sylvia Plath’s "Lady Lazarus"—and nowhere more effectively than in that opening stanza: "Kill me once more / Because again I will rise. / I have been made one with / Ash; my arms, my hair, my eyes." If poetry is, as Auden said, "memorable speech," then "Phoenix" succeeds beautifully.
Honorable Mention: "Death Across America"
I am so impressed with the technical virtuosity of "Death Across America," especially since the poet has attempted and succeeded at writing a sestina, the most difficult formal scheme I know. As in all the best formalist work, the strait-jacket of the form doesn’t hold this poem back, but rather liberates it, and leads it into new and unexpected directions. The result is a moving collage of "death-scenes," made all the more poignant by the unifying power of the form.
Honorable Mention: "I will never win a contest like this unless someone digs up the corpse of William S. Burroughs and gives him a voice"
I love the economy of this poem, and how the poet gives us the whole scene of vacationers looking at an old war plane by choosing the right details: "Flashing stars / Fat Man / Little boy... White laces ride / On wings of rusted metal." I also love how the poem’s refrain—"I now wear the remnants of past foreign wars / on the bottom of my shoe"—links the past and the present, the monumental and the mundane.
—Patrick Phillips
The "Phoenix" broadside will be available in the next few weeks. Those wishing to acquire a copy should contact Dan Albergotti in the Department of English (albergot@coastal.edu, 843-349-2420).
The deadline for the fifth contest in the Paul Rice series will be announced early in the fall semester 2008.
We wish to thank everyone who participated in the fourth contest and invite all Coastal students who will be registered in the fall to consider submitting a poem next semester.
About the Contest Judge
Patrick Phillips is the author of Chattahoochee (University of Arkansas Press, 2004), which won the 2005 Kate Tufts "Discovery" Award, and Boy (University of Georgia Press/VQR Series, 2008). His poems have also appeared in such journals as Ploughshares, Poetry, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. Phillips holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland and a PhD in English literature from New York University. He has been a fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Copenhagen. Currently, he is an assistant professor of English at Drew University.
Reminder
The first three broadsides in the series—Erin Grauel’s "Cheers," Annie Silva’s "Country Summers, Country Songs," and Brandon Wolf’s "Living in the Days of Noah"—are still available. Those wishing to obtain copies should contact Dan Albergotti in the Department of English (albergot@coastal.edu, 843-349-2420). A small requested donation of $1.00 per copy goes directly to support the continuation of the Paul Rice Poetry Broadside Series.
