It's po-biz and you win some and lose some, and I don't think an article that anaylzes all prize winning poems since 1918 and focuses only on major awards has the slightest relationship to today's situation or to the people posting on the sphere. (When it focuses on writing since 2000 it is more meaningful.) Cast a much larger net (contests with a $250 prize, for example) and limit it to the last five or ten years, and I think you might prove something.
Another problem I have with some of the comments here is that they apparently assume that the judge, or judges, know who the writer is, and the writer's background. That may be true for a few major awards, like the National Book Award, but in 99%+ of the cases the judges do not know the entrants. I've entered hundreds of competitions, from book awards to single poems, won a few and chalked up enough "almosts" to give me material for a poem about being a perennial runner-up, and I don't believe there was one of them where the identity of the entrants was known to the judges. The article analyzes the creme de la creme de la creme. That's not my world.
Last edited by Michael Cantor; 01-11-2023 at 07:59 PM.
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