Search All Winners

And the body is beautifully there, like hoarfrost.

Tears on its face now glimmering like dimes

falling from a slot machine, or a stream, thought lost,

that breaks through fresh snow at wintertime.

From Brother Salvage, posted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press

Long ago a fish forgot what fins were good for

And flew out of the stream

It was not dreaming

It had no ambition but confusion

In Nova Scotia it lies on ice in the sun

and its eye turns white and pops out like a pearl

when it’s broiled

The Titanic is the one that got away.

In 1959, Prentice Ross astounded his parents by enrolling in aviation school instead of going to Yale. Of course, being generous and humane people, Prentice’s parents didn’t have anything against pilots per se. It just happened that they had never met one, nor had they ever even thought of how a person became one. In fact, they knew not a single person who drove any machine at all (for a living, that is), so they were at a loss when they tried to imagine what their son’s future would be like.

I went to visit Grandma and Ralph for a week right after having learned how to whistle. I whistled at all times, with dedication and complete concentration. When I was asked a question I whistled the answer, I whistled along with people as they talked, I whistled the answer while I worked, I whistled while I played. Eventually they made a rule that whistling was forbidden in their house.