Stadler Center / West Branch Literary Prizes Julia Fonville Smithson Memorial Prize 2008 2009
Contents Introduction Stadler Center / West Branch Literary Prizes........ 4 Asphyxia and Other Poems Chrissy Friedlander 09, First Place Prize, Poetry........ 7 Flight Hilary Umbreit 11, First Place Prize, Prose........... 14 The Art of Forgetting and Other Poems Margaret Graham 09, Second Place Prize, Poetry........ 25 The Bass Master Weston Bettner 09, Second Place Prize, Prose............ 30 Trapped (or, Falling Freely) and Other Poems James Elliott 10, Honorable Mention, Poetry.............. 39 Introduction Julia Fonville Smithson Memorial Prizes.............. 46 The Sacraments and Other Poems Louisa Diodato 09, Poetry Winner........... 47 The Gravity of Things Chrissy Friedlander 09, Prose Nonfiction Winner........... 57 Why We Do These Things Christopher Opiela 09, Prose Fiction Winner........... 85
Stadler Center / West Branch Literary Prizes 2008 2009 The Stadler Center for Poetry and West Branch magazine are delighted to present the winning manuscripts of the Sixth Annual Stadler Center / West Branch Literary Prizes. These awards recognize outstanding works of poetry and prose by Bucknell undergraduate writers. The awards are made possible by the generous support of Rob Cadigan 86 and his wife Joan and the Bucknell Association for the Arts. The Stadler Center / West Branch Literary Prizes are judged each year by nationally prominent writers who have recently contributed to West Branch, Bucknell s nationally circulated literary journal. This year s poetry judge is poet Amaud Jamaul Johnson, author of Red Summer and winner of the 2004 Dorset Prize from Tupelo Press. The prose judge is novelist Christopher Torockio, author of Floating Holidays and The Truth at Daybreak. First and second place prizes, as well as honorable mentions, are awarded in each of two genres: prose, which includes both fiction and creative nonfiction, and poetry. The first and second place winners receive cash awards. Poetry judge Amaud Jamaul Johnson offered the following remarks on the winning poetry manuscripts: Chrissy Friedlander (First Place, Poetry) Survey the landscape of each line, and you will be overwhelmed by a tragic beauty. As much as these poems are pleasing to the ear and eye, it is the texture and rich imagistic quality that makes this work special. Moving between lyric and narrative modes, these poems map an emotional geography. This is a poetics of touch, of memory shaped by a weather-beaten hand. While the poems reflect on family and life in the Midwest, the shadow of history looms over each subject. As writer and student of poetry, I want to inhabit the consciousness of a speaker. These speakers are defined by hardships and transformations. This voice, this mind, is razor-sharp and unflinching. 4
Stadler Center / West Branch Literary Prizes 5 Margaret Graham (Second Place, Poetry) While these poems work to elevate the human condition All/ solace is diaphanous and brief they also bring The Divine down to size Heaven a big old house / oak floors and rafters, lofty ceilings, white walls. This poet s curiosity is shaped by the physical world and the counterbalance between mind and emotion. I admire how these poems consider the nature of restraint. The speakers often seem at crossroads or on precipices. Of course, the writing of poetry depends on choice and intuition. Word by word, image and action, this poet is aware of the difficult choices that shape identity. These poems are both courageous and tender. James Elliott (Honorable Mention, Poetry) The music of these poems is stunning. Read them aloud, and unconsciously you will begin tapping your toes. While end-rhyme is an important poetic device, these poems are filled with pleasurable oddities: ego gleam, / or neuron firing nicotine, We are coma conquistadors. This is an original mind, and there is real joy in these creations. Sometimes rhyme can create something artificial in a voice, but the music here is fresh and improvisational. These poems force the reader to give up control. While I felt lost at times, the frenzy and lack of restraint ironically created cohesion. I believe this poet is on the cusp of something incredible. Prose judge Christopher Torockio had the following comments on the winning prose entries: Hilary Umbreit (First Place, Prose) Flight is a remarkably advanced, vividly rendered story that brings to life through its details, language, and voice a world that is simultaneously foreign yet familiar. Ingeniously structured and paced, the story moves through time in a way that I can only describe as dreamlike. The narrator s life, her plight, takes shape before my eyes, and the often disturbing events she undergoes are so powerfully conveyed that at times I had to put the story down and walk it off. This is a story that is compounded of equal parts hope and sadness a story that sticks with you, written by a writer who is going places.
6 Introduction Weston Bettner (Second Place, Prose) The Bass Master is a moving and complex story, told with affection and patient competence, about one of the most challenging characters for a writer to bring to life on the page: a good man with a good heart. By turns self-conscious and sympathetically oblivious, always human, ultimately heroic, Francis is the kind of man I know the kind of man we all know. He s out there now, in the world somewhere, at this very moment, and I m rooting for him. Pat Stansik (Honorable Mention, Prose) Wholly contemporary in approach and intent, Corrections Needed is a multi-generational love story and family saga for today s generations. These characters are desperately hungry for love or freedom or both and this writer deftly navigates multiple perspectives to create a situation that is complicated and messy in all the best, most satisfying ways. [Stansik chose not to have his work reproduced in this booklet.]
Julia Fonville Smithson Memorial Prizes 2008-09 The Julia Fonville Smithson Memorial Prize honors the memory of a Bucknell graduate who died in 1977. The winning manuscripts are selected each year by a committee of English professors from a pool of nominated works. Traditionally, one prize is awarded in poetry and one in fiction. This year inaugurates a third category for prose nonfiction. 46
The Stadler Center / West Branch Literary Prizes, the Annual Student Reading and related events, and this publication are made possible by the generous assistance of the Association for the Arts.