You can uncross your fingers and stop holding your breath. This year's New Criterion Poetry Prized goes to Danial Brown. The news is posted on the journal's website.

Anyone know Brown or his work?

Ah, Paulie, Paulie, you broke my heart.

I don't know Daniel Brown either, and found nothing definitive (it's not an unusual name, even when combined with "formal" and poetry") googling.

[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited January 11, 2008).]

Daniel Brown is a prof in Australia.
Or at least that's what google tells me:
http://www.english.arts.uwa.edu.au/about/staff/brown

and/or this guy:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1VAU0RL3G9VIB

Peas,
Miguel

Sorry to be such a downer, guys. And I can't find anything on the guy either except for an old poetry collection at Amazon, I think, which was blurbed by X.J. Kenney, who was also one of the judges for this year's prize. Maybe we'll learn more about the poet and see some of his poems soon.

It will be very disappointing if his old poetry book was blurbed by Kennedy, you know, the head judge of the competition. . .

ach du.

M

Yes, I think that would be a disappointment as well. It's the main reason I'm reluctant to enter poetry contests, and even being published is sometimes helped along by having "connections". I guess it just goes with the territory.

Never mind.

[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited January 11, 2008).]

Are we saying that there's a necessary conflict of interest in awarding a prize to a poet whose book you've blurbed? What do these two thing mean beyond the fact that Kennedy liked two things the poet wrote?

Joe Kennedy blurbed my book. We've never met, though we've corresponded a bit.

If I heard he were judging a contest, I'd be eager to enter, because he is one of the most well-known poets of whom I have reason to believe that he likes the kinds of things I write. Would I be wrong to enter such a contest because of the blurb? Would he be wrong to give me the prize, if he thought my entry the best?

Oh, this is delicious and predictable. Look, when you're around long enough, you get to know people, or their work at least. You don't necessarily know individual poems, though. I have no idea what the procedures were to get to the final round.

Moreover, if X. J. Kennedy has no professional stake in the poet at hand's work, the fact that he praised it at some other point should merely make the decision unsurprising. Cases that have had a greater whiff of corruption have been blown off here in the past. This one seems quite innocent.

[This message has been edited by Quincy Lehr (edited January 12, 2008).]

If the guy had blurbed Kennedy, then maybe you'd have a case of tit for tat, but this is more like a case of two tits. So let's not act like boobs.