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The 2017 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Poetry

Finalist: Collected Poems: 1950-2012, by the late Adrienne Rich (W.W. Norton)

For a musically crafted life’s work that remains as boldly relevant today as when it was written.

Nominated Work

Collected Poems: 1950-2012

By

Adrienne Rich

The collected works of Adrienne Rich, whose poetry is “distinguished by an unswerving progressive vision and a dazzling, empathic ferocity” (New York Times).

Adrienne Rich was the singular voice of her generation and one of our most important American poets. She brought discussions of gender, race, and class to the forefront of poetical discourse, pushing formal boundaries and consistently examining both self and society.

This collected volume traces the evolution of her poetry, from her earliest work, which was formally exact and decorous, to her later work, which became increasingly radical in both its free-verse form and feminist and political content. The entire body of her poetry is on display in this vast volume, including the National Book Award–winning Diving Into the Wreck and her prize-winning Atlas of the Difficult World.

The Collected Poems of Adrienne Rich gathers and memorializes all of her boldly political, formally ambitious, thoughtful, and lucid work, the whole of which makes her one of the most prolific and influential poets of our time.

--from the publisher

Biography

Widely read, widely anthologized, widely interviewed, and widely taught, Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) was for decades among the most influential writers of the feminist movement and one of the best-known American public intellectuals. She wrote two dozen volumes of poetry and more than a half-dozen of prose. Her constellation of honors includes a National Book Award for poetry for Tonight, No Poetry Will Serve, a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 1994, and a National Book Award for poetry in 1974 for Diving Into the Wreck. That volume, published in 1973, is considered her masterwork. Ms. Rich’s other volumes of poetry include The Dream of a Common Language, A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far, An Atlas of the Difficult World, The School Among the Ruins, and Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth. Her prose includes the essay collections On Lies, Secrets, and Silence; Blood, Bread, and Poetry; an influential essay, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” and the nonfiction book Of Woman Born, which examines the institution of motherhood as a socio-historic construct. In 2006, Rich was awarded the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by the National Book Foundation. In 2010, she was honored with The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry's Lifetime Recognition Award.

Winners

Prize Winner in Poetry in 2017:

Tyehimba Jess

For a distinctive work that melds performance art with the deeper art of poetry to explore collective memory and challenge contemporary notions of race and identity. Poetry

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Poetry in 2017:

Campbell McGrath

For a poetry collection, dazzling in ambition and sweep, leading readers on a tour of the 20th century that is both objective and personal, private and shared.

The Jury

Jane Hirshfield(Chair)

poet

Wesley McNair

Poet Laureate of Maine

Gregory Pardlo*

Assistant Professor of English

Winners in Poetry

2016

Peter Balakian

Poems that bear witness to the old losses and tragedies that undergird a global age of danger and uncertainty.
2015

Gregory Pardlo

Clear-voiced poems that bring readers the news from 21st Century America, rich with thought, ideas and histories public and private.
2014

Vijay Seshadri

A compelling collection of poems that examine human consciousness, from birth to dementia, in a voice that is by turns witty and grave, compassionate and remorseless.
2013

Sharon Olds

A book of unflinching poems on the author's divorce that examine love, sorrow and the limits of self-knowledge.
See All Poetry

2017 Prize Winners

Feature Writing

C. J. Chivers

For showing, through an artful accumulation of fact and detail, that a Marine’s postwar descent into violence reflected neither the actions of a simple criminal nor a stereotypical case of PTSD.
Commentary

Peggy Noonan

For rising to the moment with beautifully rendered columns that connected readers to the shared virtues of Americans during one of the nation’s most divisive political campaigns.
Criticism

Hilton Als

For bold and original reviews that strove to put stage dramas within a real-world cultural context, particularly the shifting landscape of gender, sexuality and race.
Editorial Writing

Art Cullen

For editorials fueled by tenacious reporting, impressive expertise and engaging writing that successfully challenged powerful corporate agricultural interests in Iowa.
See All 2017 Winners