My friend and former professor, Ed Madden, who frequently and appropriately made me cry for less than stellar research on postmodern Irish feminist poets senior year, has won yet another prestigious poetry award for his poem "Prodigal: Variations." Here is a link to the story that ran in the Columbia, South Carolina paper.
Ed wins poetry award; book to follow
This is huge, but not surprising news. His book of poems will be published next year by USC press. I love what he says in this article about the sentimentality of poetry. His is so visceral. It makes me want to take out my old Rollerball and start again on my own poetry, which I have not aggressively pursued since college because really I'm not that good. Here is his winning poem. Brilliant:
PRODIGAL: VARIATIONS
And he said, A certain man had two sons....
Plowing beans takes concentration. Line up the plow in the long green rows — position the left wheel’s axle bolt
directly above a row and watch the wheel whir the furrow, or put the hood’s chrome-figured tip between two rows
the tractor straddles — these necessary, inaccurate alignments. My brother was better than me at the plow. I remember
the difficult turns, remember the dark soil, the bright blades, my father waiting at the other end.
A man watches the road. He will see me coming.
Even a great way off, he will see me coming.
*
Sometimes harvest went on into dark — wives unwrapping sandwiches in wax paper,
men eating off the tailgates of old trucks. I sat in the back, watching them eat,
handed my dad the thermos of coffee. Soon, my brother would demand to join
the men in the fields. I never did. The lights of the combines combed the field.
