If I were to look at the entire decade, I could simply draw my favorites from Copper Canyon Press’s list and leave it at that. It’s been a momentous decade for the Press, marked by two Pulitzer Prizes, a poet laureate, several National Book Awards and nearly 200 hundred poetry titles. It would be Sophie’s choice for me to choose my favorites from our list. So hear are a few of my personal highlights from 2009. I’d love to hear some of your favorites–especially if they include a Copper Canyon book!

Michael Wiegers, Executive Editor

Favorite Book(s) of the Year
My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century by Adina Hoffman.
Publishing Taha Muhammad Ali’s So What is one of the highlights of my publishing career. Reading this biography-cum-political-history was an equally transformational experience. Stay tuned for my longer review of the book in the near future. Or do yourself a favor and go out and buy it. You will not regret this one.

The Shadow of Sirius by W.S. Merwin.
I hope the rest of the authors on Copper Canyon’s list will forgive me, particularly since I first read this book in 2007. It makes my list not only because our office exploded when it won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize, but because I still remember the first time I read the manuscript of this book. After reading it, my first reaction was very simple: I was happy to be alive in a world that could provide us with such poetry, that could provide such a model of integrity, intentional living and right livelihood. It’s a gorgeous collection.

Favorite CD
Hometowns by Rural Alberta Advantage
Although this trio from Canada (why is all the good independent pop music coming from Canada these days?) released Hometowns in 2008, they didn’t find a label and wider US distribution until 2009. Upon first listening they sound somewhat like Neutral Milk Hotel, but they are entirely their own sound. In their live performances these folks are about as unassuming as it gets. Hometowns was in heavy rotation for me all year long.

I’m a music junkie, so dozens of albums could qualify as runners up, including Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, XX, Ran Blake, Bill Frisell, Ghana Select, Marvellous Boy, but currently I’d give a two-way tied for second place to:
Born on Flag Day by Deer Tick
AND
Know Better, Learn Faster by Thao and the Get Down Stay Down

Favorite Song
“Sleep All Summer” by The National & St. Vincent

Favorite Movie
Dare I admit that I laughed hysterically during Hangover?

Favorite Art Exhibit
Francis Bacon: A Centenary Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Runner Up: Alexander Calder at Seattle Art Museum.

Favorite Manuscripts of 2009 (eventually to be books from Copper Canyon Press):
Check back in the next day or two to see the highlights of 2010 and beyond!

(http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-caw-off-the-shelf20-2009sep20,0,4631326.story)

Michael Wiegers

Here’s one of them:

MY BROTHER’S GRAVE
Like a city I’ve always hated, driving through but never stopping,

my foot on the gas, running all the lights,

wishing I were home. Hating even the children who live there

as if they had a choice. I imagine him

in his ten-million particles

of ash, tied up into a beautiful white bundle of lace, a silver bow

looped where his neck should be,

thrown into a washing machine, set on a delicate cycle

to spin forever under the dirt. The all of him

left, the vegetation of him, the no more thing

of him: his skateboard and mountain bike and beers and cigarettes and daughter

and mix-tapes and loneliness, his legs and feet and arms and brain and kneecaps.

Outside of the graveyard

there is still some part of him

buried in the mysticism of his DNA, smeared across a doorknob

or brushed along the jagged edge of his car keys. Two kids

from the high school nearby

will fuck each other on top of him

and I won’t know how to stop them. Someone, sometime,

will throw an empty bottle of vodka over their shoulder

and he will have to catch it.

***

Matthew was recently inteviewed by Michael Silverblatt on KCRW. (http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/bw090625matthew_dickman). It’s worth checking out.

(And just yesterday I received the preliminary offerings from a new book by his brother Michael Dickman. I expect to share some of those very soon.)

You that sang to me once sing to me now
let me hear your long lifted note
survive with me
the star is fading
I can think farther than that but I forget
do you hear me

do you still hear me
does your air
remember you
oh breath of morning
night song morning song
I have with me
all that I do not know
I have lost none of it

****

Earlier this year when The Shadow of Sirius earned the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, W.S. Merwin became one of only three poets to win the award twice.

In late May I had the tremendous privilege of joining W.S. Merwin at Columbia University, as he and other writers at the height of their powers—historians, novelists, playwrights, and journalists—gathered to accept this year’s Pulitzer Prizes. Merwin was typically graceful and gracious in receiving his award, even while cameras from “Bill Moyers Journal” watched his every movement.

Yet while the award-winners were honored, there was a sobering feeling in the air, with the future of journalism and newspapers a dominant topic of conversation. Like so many in the publishing industry these days, despite such invigorating, meaningful moments, I wonder about the future of publishing—if and how readers will engage with news and literature. As the audience at Columbia listened to the few speeches and conversations at the Pulitzer ceremonies, I started to wonder about the future of the Pulitzer Prizes themselves. How much longer will people gather to celebrate such achievements in writing when we are witnessing the closure of papers like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, or the threatened closure of the Boston Globe—to name just two?

I last attended the Pulitzer ceremonies in 2005, in the company of Ted Kooser, who received the award for his book Delights & Shadows. During that visit, I watched as Bilal Hussein and several other AP photographers enthusiastically collected their award for International reporting. Not too long thereafter, Hussein was imprisoned in Abu Ghraib by the US military and held for over a year without being formally charged, apparently for doing his job too well. (It may be worth noting that this event itself escaped media attention.) Every book, every article and every poem is layered with and supported by additional narratives of dedication and risk—behind-the-scenes labors that lead to its writing and publication.

This year perhaps no story was more telling than that of Paul Giblin who received the award for best local reporting, with his investigative coverage of Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio in The East Valley Tribune. Giblin and his co-recipient Ryan Gabrielson spent six months researching and writing their expose and questioning Arpaio’s abuse of his office. Giblin and Gabrielson gathered their information with the help of many others who believe that such work is crucial to a functioning democracy. [www.eastvalleytribune.com/page/reasonable_doubt]. After talking with Giblin about his work, someone in the Copper Canyon group asked “What’s next for you?” expecting him to tell us about another momentous piece of reporting. Giblin’s response: “Find a job.” It turns out that to survive in this economy, his paper had to cut one-third of its staff, so even a Pulitzer-winning writer can be left without a place to ply his trade.

Which brings me back to poetry.

When I first read the manuscript for The Shadow of Sirius, I was struck by a number of strong responses, but most notably the feeling of simple joy to be alive in a world that provides us with singular poets like W.S. Merwin, poets who work in silent isolation. That Shadow of Sirius was honored in a tradition alongside journalists who doggedly follow a story and photographers who risk their lives to give us images from the frontlines make the award all the more poignant. And yet, none of these writers write toward the goal of an award, recalling Merwin’s poem “From the Start”:

Who did I think was listening

when I wrote down the words

in pencil at the beginning

words for singing

to music I did not know

and people I did not know

would read them and stand to sing them

already knowing them

while they sing they have no names

We need poets like W.S. Merwin and journalists like Paul Giblin. In the coming months I hope to highlight and acknowledge such people in this space.

Michael Wiegers