Here is the first winner of the New Criterion poetry prize. "Petersen has long been an underappreciated master of formal verse. He is a perfectionist, willing to spend actual years polishing and repolishing his poems. If it is hard to tell the older poems from the new, that is because what they really are is timeless."–Donald Justice.
Here is the first winner of the New Criterion poetry prize. Petersen has long been an underappreciated master of formal verse. He is a perfectionist, willing to spend actual years polishing and repolishing his poems. If it is hard to tell the older poems from the new, that is because what they really are is timeless.O-Donald Justice.
Donald Petersen, born in Minneapolis, studied at Carleton College with Arthur Mizener, Reed Whittemore, and others, spent a year at the Sorbonne, and later, at the Poetry Workshop of the University of Iowa, studied with Paul Engle, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, and Karl Shapiro. During two summers at the Indiana School of Letters he studied with John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Randall Jarrell, and Delmore Schwartz. He has taught at Iowa and is now professor emeritus at the State University of New York at Oneonta.
The poems…are first-rate…Early and Late has to be one of the best collections of the year * The Hudson Review *
A natural-born lyricist and an accomplished technician. * Poetry ( *
The New Criterion, which has published poetry since 1984, is recognized as one of the foremost contemporary venues for poetry with a regard for traditional meter and poetic form. The magazine was thus an early leader in that poetic renaissance that has come to be called the New Formalism. Building on its commitment to serious poetry, The New Criterion has established an annual poetry prize, which carries an award of $3,000. The first winner is Donald Petersen, for his book Early and Late. Judges for the year 2000 were Donald Justice, Roger Kimball, Hilton Kramer, Robert Richman, and Elizabeth Spires. Of Mr. Petersen, Donald Justice writes: "He has long been an underappreciated master of formal verse. He is a perfectionist, willing to spend actual years polishing and repolishing his poems. If it is hard to tell the older poems from the new, that is because what they really are is timeless."
The poems...are first-rate...Early and Late has to be one of the best collections of the year
First winner of The New Criterion Poetry Prize