In October the Ohio University Press astonished me by telling me that Set The Ploughshare Deep was the nominee of one of the three Pulitzer jurors. Anthony Hecht was evidently unable to summon the second vote needed to make me one of the three finalists. Nonetheless I am deeply honored by his esteem. Knopf will soon be publishing a new collection by Mr. Hecht, and you can be sure we'll be discussing it on the Mastery and Discerning Eye boards.

Tim,

Congratulations on having your book considered for such a high honor.

Jerry

You just didn't send enough cash, Tim.

And rum cake. Always send rum cake.


Next time you'll know,
and congrats for coming so close,
wendy

Congratulations Tim! Surely nomination is itself a high honor. And perhaps it is only a matter of time...

Regarding contests and prizes, I like to remember that Sophocles only got a second place for Oedipus Rex.

Alicia

Sweet consolation, Alicia, but didn't Sophocles lose the laurel to a young nobody named Euripides rather than to Stephen Dunn?

Too true!

Prizes and awards, like the stock market, are in the short run a voting machine; it's the weighing machine of the long run that we're worried about, and I don't doubt that "Set the Ploughshare Deep" will be found weighty indeed in the balance of time.
Richard

Wow! Congratulations on such a distinction, Tim!

Carol

Congratulations, Tim! (If a cat may look at a queen, I suppose a nobody can congratulate a Pulitzer-nominee.) I'll confess that I haven't read it, but I will go out and buy it right away.

Heartfelt thanks to all who sent cards, flowers, rum cake or posted on this thread. After he won the Nobel, Saul Bellow was asked why he'd never won a Pulitzer and responded "That prize is strictly for pullets." Unfortunately I lack his authorial authority!