I had the pleasure of attending a benefit for Copper Canyon Press last night, a reading that honored W.S. Merwin and featured Erin Belieu, Ben Lerner, Valzhyna Mort, and Matthew Zapruder. Besides my deep respect and appreciation for the Press, the poets were fantastic. They kept their readings fairly brief, which was a nice tease, and allowed Merwin to hold the spotlight.

His reading did drag on a bit, but I feel that way about nearly every reading I make it to. It’s just too hard to savor the individual gems when you hear too many poems at once. A single line or thought can tug at me and suddenly three more poems have past without my noticing.

I ran into my high school poetry teacher, and around the room sat  a handful of the most accomplished poets writing today. The crowd glowed as Merwin read on and I was glad to be there.

Seattle was recently named the most literate city in the country and I’ve known it to be a great center of literary activity. The fact of the couple thousand people in the audience affirmed those ideas with a physical proof to admire. It made me even happier to live here.

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This morning I woke up to a bit of good news: My work was selected from over 1100 entries to win a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize. I’m honored and very grateful for the writing time that money will allow. The fund, set up to honor the late Dorothy Rosenberg, awards around $200,000 each year. What’s even more amazing is that poets can continue to submit until their prizes reach $25,000. So, yes. I will keep sending them my work. Onward.