Notes from aboveground for members
who may be too shy to blow their own
flugelhorns:

To no one's surprise, Rhina Espaillat
has won this year's Barbara Bradley Prize
(of the New England Poetry Club) for best
poem by a woman. It's a great poem, and I
ought to know because I was the judge.
(Blind competition, I hasten to add!)

Deborah Warren has just had her first book
manuscript accepted at Waywiser Press, the
publishers of Tim Murphy's work. Because
this is her first book, I think we should
all give her an extra round of applause.

Meantime, brace yourselves: Deborah has ALSO
just won the 2002 Robert Frost Prize in Poetry,
and will be reading in Lawrence, Mass. at the
festivities on, I believe, October 26.

In that same Frost contest, our own Robert
Crawford (a long-time Powow) was a finalist.

Utterly shameless self-advertisement division:
My Book I of Ovid's Ars Amatoria will be coming
out (all 772 lines of the damned thing. grrrr!)
in an issue of PN Review soon. They're threatening
to publish Books II and III (the whole work) in
future issues.

Also, three of my translations of Horace coming
out next year in the Hudson Review.

There...that ought to do it for a while.

Len that's major news on the Krisak Front! PN Review is a tough ticket, and their decision certainly should assure publication of your Ovid. Along with Deborah Warren's first collection, Phil Hoy's Waywiser is also publishing the first collection of OUR Clive Watkins. Erato rules.

Whoa!!! Great news for great people (although now I do feel, well, like... a slacker). Mark my words, someday pasty-faced graduate students will be writing theses on Rhina's influence of the formalism revival.

[This message has been edited by Michael Juster (edited October 21, 2002).]

Congratulations to all. The formalists are back!

Chris

Congratulations Rhina, Deborah and Bob. Powow Rules!

Michael

Len, that's a lot of news in one post. I'm happy for Robert and Rhina, and congratulations to you on the Ovid and the Horace. Euge!
Deborah's book with Waywiser is really tremendous news! I'm looking forward to hearing more about it and getting the book. Thanks for sharing all this.

Tony

Warm if belated congratulations, Deborah, Len, Rhina and Robert! And to Clive, too.

Tim, any word on when Waywiser will be bringing out Deborah's and Clive's collections? Nice to know, from the elegant design of Very Far North, that these books will have a beauty worthy of the poems inside.

Len, thanks for all the happy news!

Rhina, fantastic that you've won yet another prize, congratulations!

Deborah and Clive, warm congratulations on your books from Waywiser...they are way wiser than other publishers to pick you two up, indeed. It must be a sweet reward!

And Deborah and Robert, all the best on winning and placing in the Frost Prize contest, excellent!

Len, all the best on your Ovid and I hope you (and everyone else here) will have time to join the translation forum on Lariat with a few more breezy and amusing comments (or at least candid) on the subject of translations. I found and re-posted a quote from Rhina's informative interview with you from current issue of Able Muse, so thanks for that too.


Terese

Membership in this outstanding group does tend to make me drunk with enthusiasm, but I try to restrain myself: sometimes it's hard, as right now, with so many members with new books coming out, and new prizes! I've been looking through Deborah Warren's ms, and have been crowing and bragging even when there's no one in the room with me. And what Len did not mention is that he is now working on a translation of Ovid's "Ars Amatoria" that is outstanding even by Powow standards. My one source of frustration is the knowledge that several in the group--Robert Crawford comes to mind, and Michele Leavitt, and David Berman--who have stunning mss that have not found publishers yet. The next few years could be exciting for poetry lovers!