Finalist: What Love Comes To: New & Selected Poems , by Ruth Stone (Copper Canyon Press )
A collection of poems that give rich drama to ordinary experience, deepening our sense of what it means to be human.
Winners
Prize Winner in Poetry in 2009:
W.S. Merwin
A collection of luminous, often tender poems that focus on the profound power of memory.
Poetry
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in Poetry in 2009:
Frank Bidart
A book of lyric poems that evinces compassion for the human condition as it explores the constraints that limit the possibility of people changing the course of their lives.
The Jury
The Jury
Anne Winters(chair )
poet and professor of English
Carl Dennis*
professor and writer in residence
James Baker Hall
professor of English emeritus, University of Kentucky and poet laureate of Kentucky 2000-2001
Winners in Poetry
2009 Prize Winners
Patrick Farrell
For his provocative, impeccably composed images of despair after Hurricane Ike and other lethal storms caused a humanitarian disaster in Haiti.
W.S. Merwin
A collection of luminous, often tender poems that focus on the profound power of memory.
Las Vegas Sun, and notably the courageous reporting by Alexandra Berzon
For the exposure of the high death rate among construction workers on the Las Vegas Strip amid lax enforcement of regulations, leading to changes in policy and improved safety conditions.
Staff
For its swift and sweeping coverage of a sex scandal that resulted in the resignation of Gov. Eliot Spitzer, breaking the story on its Web site and then developing it with authoritative, rapid-fire reports.