Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry – serie

With wry humour and unflinching honesty, Cathy Colman crosses the terrain of love, family and art, asking why we resist becoming the person we truly are.

In this collection of poems - which won the 2002 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry - topics range from a union barbershop in mid-century Detroit, the obstetrics ward in a Cambodian refugee camp, the ""befuddlement"" of childhood, and the wisdom of the nursing child.

The poems in ""Reunion"" insistently turn back toward sources: toward home and the idea of home, toward the body, and toward objects that return us to ourselves. They always surprise, moving from quantum mechanics, wildflowers, and a Bobcat driver to a woman killed by a flying deer, magma becoming rock, and an invasion of flying ants. Fleda Brown deftly unites daily frustrations and suffering with profound psychological, physical, and cosmic questions.

These poems, at once elegant and earthy, reveal the inner workings of the human psyche and show us that sometimes the best defense against terror is making mischief. The Royal Baker's Daughter was raised on a diet of stone soup and the occasional leftover royal treat. This leaves her with an appetite for authenticity. With nothing but her two deft hands to guide her, she embarks on a journey into the dark forest, ""where sticks and stones and absolutes reign and nothing, even sin, is original.""""Fated to be fickle in food as in love. Not one flavor that she craves but a lick of this, of that. Sauerkraut and caraway, pickled beets, mutton, and leeks. This does not even touch upon the subject of sweets, for her nonnegotiable, as for others, faith. She takes her lumps of sugar straight. Or with crushed poppy seed to make a paste. Dusted over dumplings, powdered over cake. Never having swilled mother's milk, nutmeg in her coffee, black."" - excerpt from ""Fortune's Darling"" [copyright] The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights are reserved.

Nick Lantz explores the transformative power of tragic and miraculous experiences, through these poems that illuminate near misses of tragedy and transcendence. His gaze is both roving and microscopic—the Challenger explosion, Bigfoot, a love letter written from inside a missile silo, a mother naming and renaming a family's short-lived pets, and a plea for post-9/11 redemption. Lantz never lets his subjects or his readers off the hook, plunging head first into worlds that are both eccentric and familiar, alarming and hopeful.

Winner of the 2014 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye.Inspired by thrift store knit sleeves, punk rock record sleeves, and, of course, print book sleeves, Angela Sorby explores how the concrete world hails us in waves of color and sound. She asks implicitly, “What makes the sleeve wave? Is it the body or some force larger than the self?” As Sorby’s tough, ironic, and subtly political voice repeatedly insists, we apprehend, use, and release more energy than we can possibly control. This collection includes two main parts—one visual, one aural—flanking a central pastoral poem sung by Virgilian sheep. Meant to be read both silently and aloud, the poems in The Sleeve Waves meditate on how almost everything—like light and sound—comes to us in waves that break and vanish and yet continue.