January 6–13, 2000

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Judge’s Comments: Poetry

by David Acosta

The work of selecting a winner from among 239 anonymous entries in a wide range of voices, styles and approaches was not easy. In approaching the work, I set certain rules for myself. First, suspend personal tastes and judge the work only on those elements that make up a great poem. Among these are technique, form, content, voice, sound and, most importantly, whether the poet makes fresh use of language to convey an idea, to give it shape and form; in essence, whether the poet creates a unique and fresh experience for the reader and conveys it through the unique power of language. A great poem leaves you unsettled, it challenges, reaffirms and touches you, holding power over you long after you’ve put it down. I was looking for specific elements that singled good poems from bad ones, and promising poems from excellent ones.

After reading through the entries, many of them several times, I chose 17 poems that to me held promise, that contained some if not all of the aforementioned elements. This list was further reduced to six poems. At this point in the process the task became quite difficult. I read them all again and again, and through this process the winning poem, "After revolutions," emerged.

"After revolutions" contains all of the elements which make up a great poem. It establishes in three stanzas of differing length a world where the subject must confront past actions in an uncertain present. It encapsulates with great economy of language a moment in time where the speaker and the subject become real; one feels for them and we recognize ourselves in them. It is elegant and contains an inner music without resorting to artificial rhyme schemes, and it stays with you long after you’ve read it. Ultimately its success is measured by its power to move us, to challenge us, to make us think anew.

I could not, however, leave out the other five poems without giving them honorable mention. They are excellent poems in their own right and made my work devilishly difficult. These are: Natalie Hope McDonald’s "Difficulties at School," Mireille Gouirand’s "The Lessons of Bird," Barry George’s "Seven Haiku," Susan Naomi Bernstein’s "Hurricane Season" and Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore’s "An Attempt to Describe Visual Phenomena to a Blind Friend." (Moore was also a finalist in CP’s 1996 poetry contest.)

Juan Armando David Acosta Posada was born in Colombia, South America, and has lived in the U.S. for the past 25 years. He was a founding member and editor of Temple University’s literary journal The 14th Street Review, and a founding member of the Latin American writers collective Desde Este Lado/From This Side. A poet, writer, activist and cultural worker, he has given numerous readings, workshops and lectures throughout the Philadelphia metropolitan area and other cities across the U.S., and has been a poet-in-residence in schools through the PATHS Poetry Program and the PA Council on The Arts. His work has appeared in The Painted Bride Quarterly; The Evergreen Chronicles; Philomel; The Blue Guitar; Mayrena; The James White Review; Viva Arts Quarterly; and the anthologies American Poetry Confronts the 1990s (Black Tie Press); Shouting in a Whisper: Latino Poetry in Philadelphia (Asterion Press); Poesida (Ollantay Press); and Floating Borderlands: Twenty-Five Years of Latin American Poetry in the United States (University of Washington Press).