| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
| Second Place Winner, November 2007 Honorable Mention, Poem of the Year, 2007 - 2008 |
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BIRD PAINTER Guy Kettelhack (About Poetry Forum) I didn’t use to like the ones with birds in them — she’d paint alluring skies and water — minerally brimming glints — then seem to feel she had to punctuate their ambiguity with some expected order — carefully assorted gulls: culled illustrations out of greeting cards — obligatory birdies dotting gleaming shards of sky and sea to add cliché to the topography: some expected notion of what ought to be above, beyond, around an ocean: turned the beach from vague-and-haunting-lone to Jones. But I was an elitist prig. Now I look at each meticulously painted sprig of wing and breast and tail and beak: and almost hear my mother speak: each fine careful flying thing belies her death: bears witness to what’s left — lifts the gulls and deftly keeps them up: her artist’s breath. Judge E. Ethelbert Miller’s comments: “The voice in this poem had an artist for a mother. Memories survive death. How often do we overlook the work, the creativity of one’s parents. Why are we so critical of their lives? If we could see with their eyes, we would understand the beauty of birds. We would discover our own wings.” Poem of the Year Judge Kelly Cherry’s comments: “Internal rhyme strengthens the poem, which carries its bird imagery successfully through all four stanzas to create a persuasively heartfelt grief and tribute.” 
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About the InterBoard Poetry Competition |
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