2004 Penny Jar Prize
I cannot think of a better way to celebrate Half Drunk Muse's five year anniversary than by giving out the first Penny Jar Prize. The winning poem is funny: a ham comes out of the oven flat and "We suspect a revolution." Even "the canned goods / cluster toward rebellion." But halfway through the poem the tone shifts, so that we, as readers, find we also need to "double-check measurements, / read everything twice" to understand the issue the poem is really exploring, which I will not ruin for those who haven't yet read the poem. "Our Kitchen of Perpetual Failure," by Theresa Boyar, shows a remarkable control of tone and image and leaves the reader thinking about the expectations we place on ourselves and each other. I am delighted to name Theresa the recipient of the 2004 Penny Jar Prize.
Maurice Oliver and Taylor Graham both deserve honorable mentions for their poems, "Imagine Sharks" and "Red-Wings" (respectively). "Imagine Sharks" is an enjoyable exploration of the dramatically impossible, a nearly unimaginable scene that has, nevertheless, been imagined; and Maurice brings everything crashing back to reality in the last line with a wry acknowledgement of one possible effect of such a wild flight of fancy. "Red-Wings" has an amazing sense of pace within it; the reader is held in the poem as the man and the woman are kept by the roadside: caught between the call of nature (sorry, Taylor, I couldn't pass that up) and the call of the birds across the highway.
I would like to congratulate Theresa, Maurice, and Taylor for their exceptional poems. I'd also like to congratulate all of HDM's contributors this year who have, quite honestly, made this an exceptional year of excellent poem after excellent poem. Thank you all!
Theresa has asked that half the prize money stay with HDM (how do you split a penny, exactly?). Julie and I will have to put our heads together and see what we can come up with to appropriately use the money; maybe we will have bumper stickers, after all.