Two honorable mention poems were also selected: "Song of the Seeing Eye Dog" by Alyce Wilson and"Sometimes I Dream of Freeways" by Anna Manahan Bowman.
You are here
Public Poetry Project
Click to view the poster
2002 Overview
Click to view the poster
Courage, or One of Gene Horner's Fiddles
Lisa Coffman’s “Courage, or One of Gene Horner’s Fiddles” conflates courage and music, a moment of witness and a moment of shame.
Click to view the poster
Fire in the Onion Field
Deborah Burnham’s vivid and searing depiction, “Fire in the Onion Field,” focuses a disastrous event on the death of a mole. But the mole does not understand what happens to him and, in the poem’s closing moment, swims across the sun—a metaphor for transcendence.
Click to view the poster
Once When I Was in the Eighth Grade
Maurice Kilwein Guevara’s “Once When I Was in the Eighth Grade” captures that moment school children yearn for, the withering answer. In this case, the image is so striking, otherworldly and tragic, that the window becomes the domain of the speaker, and the act of witnessing something great.
Click to view the poster
Pagan
Beth Scroggin’s “Pagan” casts birds into menacing light, as nightmares, as something tearing at the sky—tying image to emotion in a brief and intense piece.
Click to view the poster
The Earliest Memory
Margaret Almon’s “The Earliest Memory” works to capture the ineffable in images, ranging from pebbles to the red fish at the poem’s closing. Each image is small, transitional, fleeting, like memory can itself be.
Click to view the poster
The Lighthouse
Liz Rosenberg’s “The Lighthouse” expands our appreciation for something everyday. The imagination that wants to live as a single watching eye reveals a speaker aspiring to be something larger, something greater, than she might be.