Rattle is proud to announce the winner of the 2019 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers’ Choice Award:

James Davis May (web)
Macon, Georgia
for
“Red in Tooth and Claw”

 
The 2019 Readers’ Choice Award was selected from among the Rattle Poetry Prize finalists by subscriber vote. Only those with active subscriptions including issue #66 were eligible. “Red in Tooth and Claw” earned 21.4% of the votes and the $2,000 award. Here is what some of those readers had to say about their choice:

I read it as a poem about gentleness and hope in a brutal world. I was struck by how the poem brings together mundane images with the larger search for meaning and justice around life and death. The poem was also touching in its choices, such as the narrator’s refusal to use the word ‘battle’ for cancer.
—Pervin Saket

I loved the unusual layout of “Red in Tooth and Claw” and many of its lines resonated with me. I lost a friend last year to cancer, he’d beaten it twice and it came back. To my dismay, the world went on, seemingly oblivious to his disappearance. I wondered about the same things the poet did–if we matter, if anyone is listening. In our divided nation, at a time when civility seems all but dead, I soothe myself by committing random acts of kindness, like the milk he puts out for the feral cat. The abstract is skillfully interwoven with the concrete. The ending flickers with hope and makes me feel warm inside.
—Joan Harris

This poem speaks to me as someone who recently lost a friend to cancer. It’s a poem I might have written myself to process what I’m going through, “appalled by the world and its gross refusal / to stop being the world.” In the face of this indifference, we need to find our way forward, which might come in the form of leaving milk out for a feral cat who, as we are, is only trying to make it through this.
—David de Young

I’m voting for “Red Claw in Tooth” for its voice, a voice that is so intimate I can hear the breathing in it, between the words, it steams up from the page. Yes, there’s the technique, the echo of the Tennyson poem (which I looked up as the title sounded familiar and so this poem taught me, which I appreciate), the palpable sorrow, and the compassionate and inscrutable images, and the use of the page, and the needed call for our best selves these days, but even without them, for me, it’s that voice.
—Michael Mark

To read “Red in Tooth and Claw” and all of the other finalist poems, pick up a copy of Rattle #66, or wait until the April, when those poems start appearing online at Rattle.com.

James Davis May was the winner, but this year’s voting was as evenly divided as ever—each of the remaining poems received 7–13% of the vote, and all of the finalists had their own enthusiastic supporters. As always, it was an interesting and informative experience reading the commentary. To provide a taste of that, here is a small sample of what our subscribers said about the other finalists:
 

On Kathleen Balma’s “Punch Line”:

I vote for Kathleen Balma’s “Punch Line.” Her vivid dialogue between a stripper and a club owner engaged my imagination. I found it compelling and hung on every word, waiting for the punch line. She delivered. No matter how many times I read her poem, I always laugh at the end. We could use a little humor these days.
—Andre Le Mont Wilson

I vote for “Punch Line” by Kathleen Balma. She took me into a situation I couldn’t have imagined before, and made it real and believable—great dialogue, great punchline (with “Splinters” being a wonderful way to assuage the man’s ego, implying that she believes he can bust the broom, at the same time giving a very practical reason for not holding it), and I was delighted that the poet didn’t tell me how the story ended.
—Laszlo Slomovits

On Susan Browne’s “Bonanza”:

I like poetry with clear, straight forward language but whose meaning is much deeper and multi-layered than what meets the eye. I also like poetry that sheds light on the sterility of the medical industry—how it so often leaves us feeling like we are nothing more than machines with defective parts rather than holistic beings of mind/body/spirit/emotion. I was touched by how she depicted the loneliness and fear of being a patient waiting for a test result, of a being a human inside a body; how getting pulled into that singular experience can so easily jettison you from your connection to others and to the greater flow of life. The progression of the poem from examining room to elevator to crowded street shows how the poet reconnects with all that is beyond herself, and I love that. I felt equally moved by her depiction of the frailty of human life in a physical, medical sense juxtaposed with the desire to believe we are something more than an X-ray or mammogram—and that it is precisely this part of us that is “more than” that compels us to connect and share of ourselves. This deeper part of us is the driver inside the vehicle of our bodies; the true driving force of the “bonanza” of life. Thank you to Susan Browne for sharing this deeply touching and relatable insight. It really speaks to what it means to be human on a physical, spiritual, and emotional level and about how we come to terms with the inevitable mortality of our bodies. I feel honored to have had the chance to read and reflect on this beautifully written poem.
—Jacqueline Handman

I am drawn to the way this poem captures the experience of any woman. This translates the episode into a matter of fact narrative of the internal and the external. Her use of words and form is very simple, yet very focused in how she negotiates from the X-ray machine to the outside world.
—Kashiana Singh

On Barbara Lydecker Crane’s “Mother and Child”:

The poet captures so much of the artist’s story, as well as the fear women face and inadvertently pass on to their children. I appreciate the use of form to contain the tension and experiences of the speaker and subjects sitting for her. The poem stands alone without knowing the painting due to the powerful, unsettling description used.
There are multiple layers to this succinct poem.
—Kris Beaver

This sonnet draws the reader in with a curious element in the reading of the opening line, and with every image it twists. At the volta, the poem pulls the reader from the painting’s subject to inside the portrait painter’s head as she reveals her terrifying betrayal by her husband in stealing away her own child. Powerful. The rhymes are unexpected and build on tension and terror—the reader is in the poem, holding the baby, trembling.
—Paulette Turco

On Maya Tevet Dayan’s “Foreign-ness”:

I vote for Foreign-ness by Maya Tevet Dayan. She says she came to the writing of poetry late in life, after her mother’s death. Evidently, by that time, she had stored up a wealth of experience, wisdom and passion. Much of it explodes forth from this poem. Though ostensibly the story of getting along with a neighbor of different ethnicity, layered beneath that are brilliant observations about the transmission of culture and the nature of womanhood.
—Mary Ames

The poem travels back and forth between the backyard hedge of a Canadian family in the throes of a divorce, and dealing with a daughter who is suffering from anorexia, and a family from Israel trying to fit in to the Canadian culture that often employs euphemisms in place of threats. Right away, in part 1 of 27 parts, we are told the Canadian’s dog is deaf, so no use in yelling at him, however, the dog is not deaf. And that’s the problem, a conversation where each side doesn’t seem to listen. The poem is weighted with texture that is remarkably active, varying, and unpredictable, and one that compels close attention and minute adjustments of feeling. I found myself not wanting to take sides and hoping for some resolution. The last line and a half sums up the poem: “Why do you all at once / stop being happy?”
—Joseph Zaccardi

On Daniel Arias Gómez’s “Cathedrals: Ode to a Deported Uncle”:

My grandparents immigrated to New York from Italy and today I feel a palpable affinity for the Latino culture, because, even though I was young, I remember the discrimination my grandfather experienced because he spoke with an accent. What grabbed me in the poem came right at the introduction, “Tio, you learn there is always a border.” But the way that the poem introduces the reader to the multitude of borders (and cathedrals) is captivating, and I could relate to all of them. It left me recalling a line from the old Dragnet television series: “This story is true, only the names have been changed …”
—Dave Blaine

The poem allows an entrance into multiple lives, whether real or imagined, and takes multiple turns that are both surprising and seamless (the boat, the sex). While it paints a vivid picture, the weight of the poem rests on the uncle and the unknown: where is he, what is he doing? And yet, it imagines the best for him, because to not imagine the best would be to succumb to sorrow.
—Matthew Schmidt

On Red Hawk’s “The Never-Ending Serial”:

I don’t think I’ve seen those old films with women tied to the tracks except in TV clips or as remakes in Dudley Do-Right cartoons, but the principles of discrimination in how women and minorities were represented—or not represented at all—remained true for many generations. It would have been a pretty entertaining poem just from the girls’ perspective of looking for white men to save them or from looking at the boys’ feelings of inadequacy. Looking at it from both perspectives grabbed my vote. It brought back my own frustrations in the ’50s that women never did anything exciting on TV. I either pretended I was Roy Rogers or Superman or made up my own female roles: Gloria the Angel and Morning Cloud the Indian Princess. Gloria could fly like Superman. Morning Cloud could ride a horse better than Roy, and both could speak to animals in their own tongues.
—Alarie Tennille

The poem that resonates most deeply with me is Red Hawk’s “The Never Ending Serial,” for when I was a boy, our small town’s little movie theatre showed those never ending serials, just as Red tells it. So I am imprinted by them. The poem cashes along apace, revives my excited mind adventures as the train approaches. But more than that, the poet goes beyond the poem and feels empathy with the damsel in distress, her point of view, as a commentary on society and its cliché thinking. As well, he expresses his own, and some other males’ POV, showing the helpless side of malehood.
—Herb Bryce

On Sue Howell’s “Gender Studies”:

The poem is clear and concise in its imagery and insightful in its content without sacrificing pace or rhythm. It is exactly what poetry is meant to be.
—J.M. Greff

“Gender Studies” is one of the freshest poems I’ve read in months. Ms. Howell observes keenly, with rich, rich detail and humor. This is what can happen when poets don’t write in the first person, which John Ciardi called the lyric yelp, as from the newborn popping out of the womb, and which Toni Morrison considered anathema.
—Alberta Lee Orcutt

On Kimberly Kemler’s “From Oblivious Waters”:

I vote for “From Oblivious Waters” by Kimberly Kemler because of the poem’s made-to-look-effortless use of meter and rhyme, crafted with a light (but far from frivolous) touch. I especially liked the introduction of a second main character in the final third of the poem, a female photo developer imagined at work in the darkroom, who may or may not be another earlier version of the speaker herself. And because the world is water.
—Scott Lowery

As always I’m impressed with all the contest poems and love reading them a few times. Tonight I’m sure my heart votes for Kimberley Kemler for “From Oblivious Waters” after William Empson. Before I made my final choice I of course had to look up William Empson. So I am smarter than before and loved reading about his seven ambiguities of any given “piece of language.” I admired how free Kemler was to do what Empson advised in a piece of writing, using imagination “to go find yourself.” In addition to her fine craftsmanship I loved how she began the poem with brushing her teeth, spitting and setting about looking for a line of poetry and the whole thing goes on a journey of memory and discovery of an old lover, merging ambiguity after ambiguity into a lucid whole, the photograph of the woman in a wash of developer. Thanks for the ride, rhyme and all.
—Perie Longo

On Gabrielle Otero’s “Self-Portrait, Despite What They Say”:

I was captivated from beginning to end. Sometimes when I read work by poets whose backgrounds are vastly different than my own, I almost feel guilty because I don’t “get it.” Ms. Otero’s poem was so vivid and creatively direct, it would be hard for anyone to feel disconnected from it.
—Rose Layman

My vote gets cast for “Self-Portrait, Despite What They Say” by Gabrielle Otero. (Though it was hard to ignore, “From Oblivious Waters” with its wonderful cascading rhyme scheme.) There are some wonderful lines in the poem and a very effective use of the type of enjambment I like where a second meaning is invoked depending on whether one reads through syntactically or stops at the line break. Also, the last four tercets feel like one long exhale (It is not lost on me …), which makes a nice culmination to the breathless progression of the first 2/3 of the poem—kind of like a finale of a fireworks display. And finally, the last two lines echo a bit of history: The Balfour Declaration at the end of WWI, when the Allies were dividing up the spoils of war, gave the Palestinian territories to the Israeli diaspora for a new nation, and was introduced at a ceremony by declaring, A land without people for a people without a land—thereby ignoring the 700,000 Palestinians who were living there.
—D.M. Dutcher

Rattle is proud to announce the winner of the 2018 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers’ Choice Award:

Katie Bickham (web)
Shreveport, Louisiana
for
“The Blades”

 
The 2018 Readers’ Choice Award was selected from among the Rattle Poetry Prize finalists by subscriber vote. Only those with active subscriptions including issue #62 were eligible. “The Blades” earned 24% of the votes and the $2,000 award. Here is what some of those readers had to say about their choice:

All ten of these poems were masterful and heartbreaking or hilarious, each in its own way. I’m choosing “The Blades” as my favorite because in seven vivid paragraphs, Bickham creates a new myth as powerful and memorable as the Greek myths, beautifully written and sharp as a blade. The last paragraph was shocking and unforgettable.
—Mimi Plevin-Foust

Late fall of 2018, I read The Power by Naomi Alderman. What. A. Novel. This dystopian future imagines a response to #MeToo in which women discover that—shockingly—they have had an ability which makes them strong, dangerous, unique, and unpredictable, and as society adjusts to this “new generation” of women, power dynamics shift swiftly and startlingly. Similarly, this poem envisions a new myth for women of the body and its trauma as its new strength. I connected with the narrative form that made it believable, a cause-and-effect perspective on how it might really happen when we suddenly change and have to suddenly accept ourselves. “Empowering” is sometimes an overused term, but this poem was genuinely empowering.
—Maggie Hess

I know how important it was for me to win the Readers Choice Award in 2017, so I made sure to make an extra effort in my voting this year. On the first day, I read the poems one to ten in order. On the second day, I read the poems from ten to one. On the third day, I read the poems in random order. Then on the fourth day, I skimmed through all of them. On each day, the poem that stuck with me was Katie Bickham’s “The Blades.” I have not been able to get it out of my head. That is the poem I vote for.
—Jimmy Pappas

I like the way Katie Bickham’s “The Blades” uses a mythic narrative arc to elevate the language to a fevered pitch which does not let up through all seven stanzas. The poem is filled with images, startling turns of phrase (“one wing per wrong,” “hair sliced off like a whisper,” “statures curved downward like sorrow,” “women folded // around their secrets like envelopes”), and allusions to both literature (“red letters”) and current events. The poem can rightly be called a tour de force for the technical skill it displays and the way, as Alicia Ostriker would say, it “steals the language” from its male oppressors.
—Robert Allen

To read “The Blades” and all of the other finalist poems, pick up a copy of Rattle #62, or wait until the April, when those poems start appearing online at Rattle.com.

Katie Bickham was the winner, but this year’s voting was as evenly divided as ever—each of the remaining poems received 6–13% of the vote, and all of the finalists had their own enthusiastic supporters. As always, it was an interesting and informative experience reading the commentary. To provide a taste of that, here is a small sample of what our subscribers said about the other finalists:
 

On Destiny Birdsong’s “Long Division”:

This one kept me coming back to it, and it rewarded me more and more with re-reading, something none of the others did to any equal measure although I liked all the poems and, when I first read them, thought I would have a hard time choosing this year. So I didn’t choose, then. I just kept thinking about the poems, and “Long Division” was the one that stayed in my mind, partly because it’s so complex, partly because the voice is so compelling, partly because the images are so arresting. I was afraid that when I read it again, it wouldn’t seem as strong. But it did and did and does.
—Lynne Knight

It’s hard to write good poems about rape, about how it intersects with other parts of one’s sexual identity. It’s hard to keep it real without veering over into titillation or the pornography of violence. This poem manages to do all that and more—it’s use of language, repetition, the swing between high and low culture all mark it as something truly special. It’s not preachy. It doesn’t tell us what to do or how we should think. It is righteous and fierce while being tender, like Cardi B.
—Kristin Mathis

On Debra Bishop’s “Lonely, Lovely”:

This poem makes me want to finish my poetry. It is the deepest deep down thing inside me.
—Charles Kesler

Ms. Bishop has crafted a picture that is so clear it’s as thought she’s plucked a note on a string instrument that rings true and reverberates and grows louder rather than passing back into silence. It is the essence of what we mean when we say, “that speaks to me,” or “it resonates with me.”
—Emily Parker

On McKenzie Chinn’s “You Don’t Look Like Someone”:

What makes Chinn’s poem outstanding and important is that she meditates on what really happened behind the words in a brief elevator exchange and arrives at a place to take back personal power. After hearing a statement that questions her belonging in the building, the speaker “arms” herself with the “learned response, survivor staple.” Chinn’s line breaks, expert repetition, and brevity of language emphasize the “centuries” long gaps “between the someone and the who,” and the insinuations of racial dominance in the remark, what the speaker hears through the “thin walls in this place.” By the end of the ride, she has angered beyond a defensive to an antagonistic stance, both corrosive in social interactions, but she continues to reflect on what she “could’ve / said” to put the exchange on equal footing. These inner twists and turns are real and well rendered.
—Sandra Wassilie

As a woman of color, I can’t help but identify with the speaker in the poem and her experience. Plus, I like the mixing of different stanza forms and text styles in the poem.
—Stephani Maari Booker

On Steve Henn’s “Soccer Dad”:

For me, the winner is Steve Henn’s unexpected Soccer Dad. It is smooth, funny, sad and speaks the truth without any overt anger—this poet has a polish that takes the politics of our incredibly hypocritical society, our manipulations of our own children, our neighbors, our selves—how we got to the thug in the White House, really, and the intense loneliness we feel in our everyday lives, and he spins it into a truly marvelous read. I shared it with a good friend of mine, who is a “reader” of my poems and I loved hearing him read it in his own voice. We took turns reading it, and each time, this poem/monologue became more important, and even funnier, if possible. A true standout, among the finalists. I look forward to more of his work.
—Michelle Margolis

I laughed and felt part of the poem, part of the experience on the soccer field , part of wanting to hide poetry from silly judging eyes, and the end, a perfect comedic moment. You know the protagonist is going to stand up and do something hysterically proud and ridiculous . For Love. And then it happened. Like a perfect pratfall in a comedy. And like all good comedy, it revealed us, and made comedy into something that is poignant true sad and funny all at the same time.
—David Susswein

On Courtney Kampa’s “In Charlottesville After Charlottesville”:

This is the poem I came back to again and again. Courtney Kampa is doing such a deft and difficult thing here: describing a moment of national outrage and tragedy by showing us the marks it left on the lives of people who were actually there, including her. With its incongruous images (“their faces doing that angry Goya thing / with the colors,” “the steel front bumper / severed, like two arms bent, palms up / and sorry”), this poem feels like it simmered a long time while the poet figured out just how to write this thing that affected her so deeply, personally, physically, as a person who lives in this community. Poems of witness, when done well, can carry a sort of self-propelled power via the events they describe. But this one goes beyond; it’s masterful writing by a poet who probably doesn’t feel good about having made this tragedy into art. You can sense that, all through these lines.
—Amy Miller

I love the way this poem spirals grief all over the place, illuminates different versions of “mortal sin,” and most impressively, tells us something about intergenerational violence and the forms of rage we inherit. There is so much kneeling and crouching and claustrophobic deference in this poem— a brilliant meditation on passivity and exhaustion in our current political climate.
—Megan Fernandes

On Michael Lavers’ “Will Exult Over You With Loud Singing”:

It’s touching, plainspoken, suspenseful, eventful, subtle, complex—a novel of a poem. With its particulars about three generations of a family it also conjures reflections universal enough so that any reader might relate them to their own experience.
—Paula Bonnell

Reading through all these wonderful poems gave me a glimpse into the challenge faced by anyone who’s having to judge a poetry contest. But the Lavers poem stood out in its ability to shift back and forth in time and in its interweaving of the abstract with the particular. Just as there are layers in and beneath the bark of a tree, there are layers of meaning in this poem. It calls me to revisit it again and again.
—Alexa Selph

On Darren Morris’ “To the Insurance Agent Who, in Denying Coverage, Explained that Everything Happens for a Reason”:

The poem takes on a major human concern—religious faith—and grapples with it by considering one horrible act done in the name of faith. It’s brave, and its shocking central image will stay with me a long time.
—Mary Ann Honaker

Fantastically dark poem. Brilliant use of history to tease apart that bland sop, “Everything Happens for a Reason.” Hell yes, it does, but that reason can be unjust, misguided, malicious, and perverted as all get out.
—Devon Balwit

On Loueva Smith’s “The Dead Weight of Dogs”:

There is always a kind of strangely split feeling about the love we feel for those who require our constant care. This poem is an attempt to bring together that duplicity toward the humane. Honest and courageous.
—William D. Dyes

I read Loueva Smith’s “The Dead Weight of Dogs” immediately after reading Nickole Brown’s award-winning chapbook, To Those Who Were Our First Gods. I walked around in a gray cloud for the rest of the weekend, fighting a lump in my throat and seriously thinking about becoming a vegetarian. “The Dead Weight of Dogs” went straight to my soul—it is a poem I will not forget, and the last four lines still bring tears to my eyes. A poem with that much impact deserves the Reader’s Choice Award.
—Carol Clark Williams

On Mike White’s “The Way”:

It’s short. It’s one slithery sentence. Its use of rhyme suggests it could have been written as an epigrammatic couplet but it toys with that idea and moves along as the dog moves along or, to put it another way, its “in-the-way” structure is lifted to reveal something new and original.To go a bit further: if you take “to” as an echo of “two,” then all four legs—one, to, three, fourth—are referenced in the poem. Great things come in small vessels. I hope it wins.
—Conor Kelly

I love short poetry, especially when it successfully captures everything that needs to be said in a few brief lines. Saying a lot with the bare minimum is incredible skill. My parents are both amputees and the theme of White’s poem, in particular, really hit home for me. It’s simplistic and clever, but most of all the language leaves you with this ringing in your ears, and I don’t know if it’s the rhyme or something deeper, but I hope it never goes away because I love this sound.
—Tenley Sablatzky

Rattle is proud to announce the co-winners of the 2016 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers’ Choice Award:

Ellen Bass
Santa Cruz, California
for
“Poem Written in the Sixth Month of My Wife’s Illness”

David Kirby
Tallahassee, Florida
for
“This Living Hand”

The 2016 Readers’ Choice Award was selected from among the Rattle Poetry Prize finalists by subscriber vote. Only those with active subscriptions including issue #54 were eligible. Both Bass’s and Kirby’s poems earned exactly 14.4% of the votes, resulting in the first ever tie. The $2,000 award is split equally between them. Here is what some of those readers had to say about their choices:
 

On Ellen Bass’s “Poem Written in the Sixth Month of My Wife’s Illness”:

From line one, I knew this poem was going to take me somewhere boldly vulnerable. I love that the piece depends on the body and title being together to work. The relationship between the loss of the narrator’s mother and wife’s illness is painfully honest and revelatory, yet the rich, detailed memories moving through the piece are so real and close that a sense of comfort is felt, too. This poem embodies not only the heartbreak and beauty of love and loss, but also the doubling of this heartbreak over time. A truly stunning piece! —Nicole Miyashiro

“Poem Written in the Sixth Month of My Wife’s Illness” really hit me hard with the deep emotional truth of it, and a close reading reveals all of the art that brings that truth home. There is a compassionate rendering of parts of her mother’s life. Apparently she minded a liquor store. It seems she was a drinker as well. Some of that life seems so mundane as to be pitiable, but there is no scorn for it, only understanding. All the details are acutely observed: for example her lipstick of Fire and Ice dates her time exactly (of course I remember it because I wore it!). Close after the fire and ice she remembers the snow her mother shoveled. There is an early intimation of death when she describes her mother putting on her bra, settling the straps in the grooves in her shoulders, “reins for the journey.” This reminds me of Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death,” where the horses’ heads were pointed toward eternity. The journey is also her life, headed as all lives are, toward death. A lot of the beauty of the body of the poem is in the assonance and internal rhyme and off-rhyme threaded through it: for example, all the crumpled bills … steeped in the smells of those whose body heat, cheap cologne, onions and grease, lumber and bleach and later the cream of wheat her mother cooked for her father. Never did I feel the sense of the poem was subordinated to this artistry. Instead, the poem gains in feeling so that when it ends with the story her mother told her of when her father was in the hospital in danger of dying and her mother sat in a diner crying while a kind waitress never asked her a question but just continued to re-fill her coffee cup, we are really afraid that the poet sees herself in the same sort of situation, afraid of losing her wife.
—Ann Gearen

I am deeply moved by the Ellen Bass poem “Poem Written in the Sixth Month of My Wife’s Illness,” which avoids reacting to or directly commenting on her wife’s illness and focuses instead upon her mother by presenting her both in moments when they were together or apart in a kaleidoscope of images.
—Marcus Cafagna

From the first unforgettable sentence, “I didn’t know that when my mother died, her grave/ would be dug in my body,” Ellen Bass exerts an unrelenting, emotional and tender assault on the psyche of the “I” (or anyone) dealing with the harsh reality of loss. Details (crumpled bills, pink or yellow napkins, hot black coffee, etc.) become bitter, sweet, knives, and like objects, keep expanding in the universe of memory.
—Brenda Yates

On David Kirby’s “This Living Hand”:

The idea that you can take a fragment written in the margin of a Keats’ poem to tell the story of one lost soul in the sea of many while quoting literary figures, Jefferson’s edited words about truth, and mystics all connecting to Keats’ fragment is an amazement. When Kirby holds his “living hand” out to his dead friend, the Celtic “thin place” opens and I grab it. Listening to the horror of political news this morning yet again, I hold onto Kirby’s poem.
—Perie Longo

David Kirby’s poem “This Living Hand” would be my choice. It is a powerful story, told with understatement and straightforward language. The weaving in of Keats’s dying moments gives the poem an even deeper level of poignancy.
—Alexa Selph

It is a single very personal elegy and homage to writers and writing, to the young who should not have died so young, to multiple stories colliding, to ideals we hold to be self-evident, to a world that should be better but isn’t, and to the mysterious power of poetry. Its casual language and spiritual force undo me every time.
—Alicia Ostriker

“This Living Hand” has well-wrought seams, partly because the most obvious one, “It’s so hard to connect/ with others sometimes,” seems at first too jagged and abrupt—but then it becomes clear that this very abruptness enacts the dilemma at the heart of the poem, between the here and not-here, the living and the dead, a dilemma beautifully resolved at the end as the speaker urges his friend to reach out in the timeless world of the dead the way he was unable to reach out in life. Plus the image of the hand as a metonymy for the writer justifies the sudden presence of Keats in the poem even more—as does the fact that both writers died far too young. I think it’s a deeply moving and beautifully achieved elegy, and apart from Julie Price Pinkerton’s wonderful “Veins,” which feels like a memoir skillfully rendered to its essentials, Kirby’s poem is the one that went straight to my heart and stayed there.
—Lynne Knight

To read these poems, pick up a copy of Rattle #54, or wait until the end of March, when those poems start appearing online at Rattle.com.

Ellen Bass and David Kirby were the co-winners, but this year’s voting was more evenly divided than any other—each of the remaining poems received about 8% of the vote, and all of the finalists had their own enthusiastic fans. It’s always interesting and informative experience reading the commentary; to provide a taste of that here is a small sample of what our subscribers said about the other finalists:
 

On Noah Baldino’s “The Nurse Lifts the Clipboard & Replaces All Your Vital Signs”:

The Lewis Carroll-like play of words, the horror of his/her experience, the times that we’re living in blended with the personal and the public … a surreal experience tinged with wildly black humor. This made for a truly literary and artistic piece that I believe will live on, burned into any soul that knows what it is to be at all different in this world. Noah has crafted a poetic—and scalding—masterpiece.
—Michelle Margolis

In a field of strong poems, Noah Baldino’s “The Nurse Lifts the Clipboard …” stands out. It plays with or presents us with a semi-surrealist scene that is presented emotionlessly, objectively, and yet is disturbing, unsettling. The implicit horror of the situation is all the stronger for the almost off-hand way in which it is narrated.
—Tom Hansen

On C. Wade Bentley’s “Spin”:

Phenomenal piece. Powerful and very balanced between the heartbreak and the logical but melancholy scientific metaphor. This is a striking and honest way of embodying the pain of fatherhood; the interior conflict of our fascination with and distaste for all the emotions that we are unwittingly held captive by (especially with our daughters). We wish only to be strong, and we are thrilled and enchanted by their trust and faith in seeing that. Then, denied this relationship, estranged by geography or circumstance, we find ourselves betrayed by our own strength, abandoned by our believed sovereignty, even our logic is left daft by melancholy as we discover ourselves to be old heroes with no damsels or dragons left to rely upon.
—David T. Trueb

For me, there are multiple touchstones, some which emerged on the first reading, and others that surfaced only on subsequent readings. The poet captured the longings and vulnerabilities of so many parents—and also the real or perceived recriminations we tend to carry throughout our lifetimes. It is comforting to apply the “Spin” and feel the continuum, regardless of where we happen to be walking in relationship to our children in this moment—and then perhaps, even into the beyond. This poem has a universal quality to it, and I appreciate the realm of possibility it offers in the end.
—Susan Turner

On Rhina P. Espaillat’s “The Sharpened Shears He Plied”:

I love how this poem stabs you on its first read, and then just keeps resonating, deepening, drawing you back for further reads to appreciate the exquisite rhyme scheme, the carefully chosen form that fights against the very imagery—an overgrowing garden—that it summons. All while capturing that stab of grief that accompanies a realization of the emptiness of things that once held meaning but cease to when the person who plied them is gone.
—Ilana A Kelsey

This is the shortest poem on offer and, if past choices are to go by, it won’t be chosen. But it is my choice for numerous reasons. There is the sense of a world “almost” in sympathy with the loss but not and that leads to what her note calls “an internal solitude, a human absence that only sentient beings can understand or allay.” And that internal solitude is beautifully modulated in this poem. She mentions the Romantics and the simplicity of the presentation and, especially the last line, remind me of Wordsworth’s Lucy poems. Like Wordsworth, she manages to get great resonance from the simple word “difference,” albeit with another evocation. There is a wonderful sense of rhyme (often slightly off kilter) and a wonderful sense of metre, something that many of the other short-listed poems lack. When a poem is that brief, the choice of words has to be exact. And it is. That penultimate line is a case in point. Someone else, a lesser poet, would have written “Nothing” instead of “No thing.” But that would have changed the metre, the meaning, and the emotion. It is for its wonderful cohesion and its emotional depth that I pick this as my choice of the poem which deserves to win the 2016 Reader’s choice award.
—Conor Kelly

On William Fargason’s “Upon Receiving My Inheritance”:

The work radiates a piercing poignancy that’s all the more powerful because the story of a man—of two men, really—is packed in the form of a poem, a shrapnel bomb explaining co-existent pain and gratitude in one person. The author’s use of relentless thank-you’s is a testament to humility, even while acknowledging the probability of worse things to come. Deeply felt irony reveals a special mind. How else do we gain understanding of others’ lives except through stories? This story happens to be formed as a poem, but its power will resonate with me as though I’d read a thousand-page novel while wide awake.
—Noreen Ayres

I like this “poem without a period.” The run-on syntax of the poem allows for multiple meanings. There is a sense of intensity and concentration and progression and inevitability. There are phrases which can be read in different ways at the same time. The poem builds to a climax which is both appropriate and ironic. One might say that the language of the poem is so precise it cuts like a knife.
—Robert Allen

On Ingrid Jendrzejewski’s “Superposition of States”:

Here is a perfectly balanced poem in which form meets function. The lines are staggered so that what we have are two independent poems married into a new relationship. If read lineally, as it should be, it forms a kind of ghazal. Like the ghazal form, this one gets its power from surprise. But there is something else at work, a kind of verbal peek-a-boo in which the narrator reveals and hides at times, is both objective and subjective, which I think imitates a more realistic processing of intimate event(s). A miscarriage is at the heart of the poem yet is tempered and contextualized by a nearly academic explanation of quantum phenomenon. Ultimately, the clinical sterility of emotion reveals a deeper human grief and loss. The Schrödinger’s cat experiment conducted within, proves the possibility and perhaps the necessity of the poetic form.
—D. Morris

In “Superposition of States,” two strands in tandem, where one is a discussion of measurement that ends a superposition of states in the field of quantum mechanics and the other a description of waiting for the results of a blood test, a measurement of whether a baby is dead or alive, simultaneously distance the speaker from the finality of the situation and add to its intimate coldness. I particularly appreciate the structure of alternating the two discussions line by line that creates dissonant line breaks yet rhythmic repetitions and intersections that parallel the shifting emotional state of the speaker. When it would seem impossible, she expresses that a superposition of states is possible, a baby living and dying. This ending evokes what is the reality for every living creature as well as the tremendous courage to risk having a baby at all.
—Sandra Wassilie

On Craig Santos Perez’s “Thanksgiving in the Anthropocene”:

The sarcastic tone is seemingly roasting the American populace for the longevity of Thanksgiving as a holiday. It brings the symbolism of the classic holiday spread into question, while flippantly commenting on the methods by which all of this food is procured; which in truth, is quite the sensitive matter to some. The idea of consumerism at the expense of humanity is extrapolated line by line as the poet trudges through gruesome facts while softening the truth through humor. But if anything this indifference, or frankly benign attitude, further critiques the attitudes of Americans upon the revelation of such atrocities. Finally, the structure itself was immaculate, especially the use of line breaks in the middle of thoughts. One specific example is found in the 12th couplet, which begins with “most”—which in relation to the previous line makes this one of the most horrid revelations of the poem; the emphasis given truly lends itself to jarring the reader into thinking and not just passively reading.
—Nick Plunkett

Kicked my ass with sad truth. Now I’m going to teach it so it can kick more asses.
—Danny Stewart

Emily Ransdell’s “The Visit”:

I love the power of simplicity. It is a subject many of us can identify with, and the poet conveys this scene with wisdom and compassion. Her understated language hits me in the gut.
—Lori Levy

Though many of the poems were good, the emotion this poem evoked made it the only choice for me. The subject matter is difficult and not easy to read about, but Ransdell’s imagery is perfect, her stanzas tight. The ending goes right to that line of sentimentality without crossing it, something that is not easy to achieve. Kudos to Ransdell for this beautiful poem.
—Robin Wright

On Patrick Rosal’s “A Memory on the Eve of the Return of the U.S. Military to Subic Bay”:

Rosal’s poem strikes that perfect balance of graceful and unsettling. The threat is real and infantilized. Laughter becomes stark, suspicious, but retains its lightness, adds softness right as it adds madness, freezing the reader, perfectly impending. The timeliness of its uncertainty is simply lagniappe.
—Chad Foret

Amazing how a simple day of tag along on a visit can suddenly be pitched to high tense anxiety. “I’m serious …” A five-year-old with a gun, seemingly amused, aware of his “side of the gun.” I am assumming that all came out peacefully—we are never told the outcome—I was a bit freaked as I read. I loved the tension, the interesting spacing in and of lines, it makes you read it differently—like a remembrance told in a haunted way, that stays with the speaker to this day. “I’m Serious!” And if our current state of affairs isn’t a time to be serious, I don’t know when is …
—Mary Ericksen