the way a sentence unfolds–Book Awards II
November 17th, 2005WaPo has a better story on the Book Awards, which of course tells of Didion’s (nonfiction) prize for The Year of Magical Thinking.
Also important is this first:
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet and founder of San Francisco’s celebrated City Lights Bookstore, accepted the National Book Foundation’s first Literarian award, for outstanding service to the American literary community.
The story fails to elaborate on the outstanding service, i.e. how the prize-givers describe or define it — does it align with my ideas?
I liked this bit of the WaPo story:
A clutch of poets were communing by themselves along one wall. What makes poetry different, they were asked?
“More with less,” said Brendan Galvin, a finalist for “Habitat: New and Selected Poems, 1965-2005.” He gestured as if outlining the shape of a poem. “The way a sentence unfolds down a page — it’s one of the great mysteries of civilization.”