Paul Rice Poetry Broadside Series Fall 2008 Winner Announced
The Coastal Carolina English Department is pleased to announce the winner of the fifth contest in the Paul Rice Poetry Broadside Series, a competition open to currently enrolled Coastal Carolina students.
Our final judge, poet Sandra Beasley of Washington, DC, selected "Seriously Funny" by William Chao as the winner. William will receive a $100.00 gift card to the Coastal Carolina bookstore and 25 copies of the broadside, which will be produced in an edition of 100 numbered copies. Please join us in congratulating William for his winning poem.
Beasley also awarded honorable mention to David Weber's "Cancer of Faith" and Elizabeth Perry's "Poseidon's First Summer."
Although she was asked only to select a winner and two honorable mentions from the entries, Beasley generously chose to comment upon her selections, as well:
Winner: "Seriously Funny"
"Seriously Funny" is a remarkable poem, belonging in an admirable tradition of those poets who wrench humor free from pathos, illuminating even the darkest family scenes: Sharon Olds, Marie Howe, Li-Young Lee. This is an ambitious poem, sustaining both a tangible story narative - the reverend's visit to a dying mother - and a cast of multiple characters, each with their own snippet of illustrative dialogue. For all that, the poem's ultimate strength is in image: the "large noggin slightly bent" of the merciless reverend, transformed by the grieving speaker's perception into "a jester with a cap . . . in that royal courtyard where/laughter and mourning were one and the same." Of any of the poems, this was the one that kept bouncing in my head long after I had left the page on my dining room table. That, to me, is the mark of a great poem - and a winner.
Honorable Mention: "Cancer of Faith"
"Cancer of Faith" demonstrates a supple understanding of the Elizabethan sonnet form, in which the closing couplet acts as an epigraph and, in this case, epitaph of faith: "Not knowing what will happen, one believes/that Life and Death and God are haughty thieves." The speaker balances the risky proposition of heightened, even archaic, diction with genuine heart and vulnerability.
Honorable Mention: "Poseidon's First Summer"
"Poseidon's First Summer" has an imaginative premise - god as toddler - played out in a series of vibrant, clever images. The poet could have settled for that, but instead shows a more complex understanding of classical mythology with the ominous concluding image of "all in this watery world trembl[ing] in [Poseidon's] shadow," before mother Rhea scoops young Poseidon up in a towel.
Beasley concluded her judge's statement in this way:
My congratulations go out to everyone at Coastal Carolina University who chose to submit to the competition. Rita Dove says that "poetry is language at its most distilled and its most powerful," and I felt that power in reading over these entries. As a body, these poems were lean, mean, free of verbal fat. If this represents the next generation of poets, then I am encouraged and inspired.
The "Seriously Funny" 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 sixth contest in the Paul Rice series will be announced early in the spring semester 2009.
We wish to thank everyone who participated in the fifth contest and invite all Coastal students who will be registered in the spring to consider submitting a poem next semester.
About the Contest Judge Sandra Beasley won the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize for her book Theories of Falling, selected by Marie Howe. In fall 2008, Black Warrior Review published Bitch and Brew: Sestinas as part of their chapbook series. Honors for her work include the 2008 Maureen Egen Exchange Award from Poets & Writers, the Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize, and fellowships to the Sewanee Writers' Conference, the Millay Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is a columnist for the Washington Post Sunday Magazine and an editor for The American Scholar in Washington, D.C.
Reminder
The first four broadsides in the series - Erin Grauel's "Cheers," Annie Silva's "Country Summers, Country Songs," Brandon Wolf's "Living in the Days of Noah," and Stephanie Bouzounis' "Phoenix" 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. Thank you for your support.
This series is named in honor and memory of Paul Rice, professor of English at Coastal Carolina from 1987 to 2004.
