Pulitzer Prize Committee honors W.S. Merwin and Ruth Stone

W.S. Merwin wins 2009 Pulitzer for poetry; Ruth Stone named finalist

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We are proud to announce that W.S. Merwin has won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection The Shadow of Sirius. The prize committee praised Merwin's "luminous, often tender poems that focus on the profound power of memory."

Ruth Stone, another Copper Canyon Press author, was named a finalist for What Love Comes To: New and Selected Poems.

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Sascha Feinstein

Blues Villanelle for Sonny Criss

A lunar eclipse, and your solos spread
across wild clover as I exhale
and try not to think of the gun at your head,
how we say but rarely believe, "You can't be dead

if you're on record." Your alto wails
to the moon's elision, the solo spread
against the splintering woodshed.
It's '57, one year before jail,

twenty before the gun's at your head
and you're my age playing "Calidad,"
"Willow Weep for Me," "Love for Sale,"
as the brief clips from your solo spread

the graying moon like cigarettes
in walnut-paneled dives, overpriced cocktails
cold as the gun you'll hold to your head.
But I'm trying not to see that, trying instead

to let the bass and chromatic scales
eclipse you, solo, outspread.
I'm trying not to think. The gun's at your head.