Judge Fleda Brown’s comments: “I pick this poem because of its affecting unpretentiousness. When one begins a poem with T. S. Eliot, it’s not easy to be unpretentious. This small poem is like the tapping of a drum. The poem is about sound: the ‘litanies of London,’ and rhythms ‘that would stun Rimbaud and Donne.’ Just when I think I know how the poem will sound, the next line does something different. The poem pulls off its abstractions. It almost gets lost in them, but the plain lines, the plain language, keep my feet on the ground. Who would think that a poem could get away with ‘interface / with the soul’s active ingredients’ without floating into space? Yet when I get here, I’m nodding my head, listening to the drum, and it’s okay.”