Got this in my mailbox today. Congratulations, Luisa! Yay!

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

James Hearst Poetry Prize
429 Entrants - 1914 Poems


FIRST PLACE
Luisa A. Igloria - Norfolk, VA - "Venom"

SECOND PLACE
Gail Thomas - Florence, MA - "Learning to Walk Again"

THIRD PLACE
Marianne Patty - Dunwoody, GA - "The Only Mermaid on the Moon"


HONORABLE MENTIONS
Kelli Russell Agodon - Kingston, WA - "If You Awake After I've Gone"
Daniel Lusk - Jonesville, VT - "Sabbath Fool"

FINALISTS
Robert Abbate - Concord, NC - "Tishbite Pottery Fragments"
Susan Elbe - Madison, WI - "Some Music"
Rebecca Foust - Ross, CA - "Strip Mine"
Jessica Garratt - Columbia, MD - "Woman Drives Past, Crying"
Paula Goldman - Shorewood, WI - "If Dickinson Had a Husband and Wrote Villanelles"
Cristine A. Gruber - Riverside, CA - "When the Time Comes, I Wish to Die in June"
Terry Hertzler - San Diego, CA - "Not Quite Déjà Vu"
Michael Kriesel - Aniwa, WI - "Zen Amen"
Melody Lacina - Berkeley, CA - "Copy Editing the Catalogue Raisonne of George Inness"
Karen Lieneke - Tucson, AZ - "The Memory of Water"
Mark Minster - Terre Haute, IN - "Krasnyi Ugol (The Beautiful Corner)"
Erin Murphy - Hollidaysburg, PA - "City Birds Are Losing Their Songs"
Sean Nevin - Tempe, AZ - "The Black Carpenter Bee"
Robert Peake - Ojai, CA - "Radish"
Jane B. Rawlings - Bernardsville, NJ - "Dawn, Leaving Venice"
Faith Shearin - Baltimore, MD - "Smoke"
Tana Jean Welch - Tallahassee, FL - "Locusts Are Swarming"


First place wins $1000, second place $100, and third place $50. Winners and finalists will be published in the North American Review's annual "National Poetry Month" March-April issue. Copies may be ordered by e-mail at or by FAX at (319) 273-4326. Since the prize entry fee paid for a subscription, entrants will receive this Hearst Prize issue automatically.


Judge TED KOOSER is a poet and essayist, a professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and most recently, US Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006. His writing is known for its clarity, precision and accessibility. He worked for many years in the life insurance business, retiring in 1999 as a vice president. He and his wife Kathleen Rutledge, editor of The Lincoln Journal Star, live on an acreage near the village of Garland, Nebraska. He has a son, Jeff, and a granddaughter, Margaret. His most recent books are Flying at Night (poems) and The Poetry Home Repair Manual (a guidebook for poets).


A renowned "farmer poet," JAMES HEARST was an NAR contributing editor and poetry professor at the University of Northern Iowa. He published many poems, stories, articles, and books before his death in 1983. His twelve poetry collections include Country Men (1937), The Sun at Noon (1943), Man and His Field (1951), Limited View (1962), Snake in the Strawberries (1979), and the posthumously published Selected Poems (1994). Hearst's definitive collection, The Complete Poetry of James Hearst, was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2001.