Nominators' Letters of Endorsement

On Nuar Alsadir: It is my pleasure to nominate Nuar Alsadir. I have been a great admirer of her work for many years now. With echoes of Rumi and Hafiz, her poems are a delicate mix of the quotidian and the profound. In witty, vibrant, always surprising turns, she reveals to us the weight of each fleeting moment. I am also a fan of her non-fiction writing, most recently a beautifully written essay for The New York Times Magazine about her experience as an Iraqi-American living in this time of war. In it, she described the confusing responses her split-identity inspires in others, as well as in herself. It was a powerful piece, and decidedly poetic in its insistence on the complex humanity of all parties involved. Nuar is on the verge of launching an important career.

—Danzy Senna, author of the novel Causasia. Senna was awarded a 2002 Whiting Award, and teaches at the College of the Holy Cross.

On Katherine Bell: Katherine Bell"s description of what her British post World War II woman finds buried in her backyard—her tiny garden—electrified me, not by what she found but by the delicacy of the description of what she found. A real writer.

—Frank Conroy,director of the Writers" Workshop at the University of Iowa, and author of four books: Stop-Time, Midair, Body & Soul, and Dogs Bark, but the Caravan Rolls On.

On Allison Benis: Ms. Benis has the gifted ability to relay intensity through quiet, subtle language. I am impressed also by her direct, insightful statements which keep the poems tense and alive. I, as you, read a great deal of new poetry, and I am happy (and relieved) to read work that doesn"t just convey sincerity, but which is undeniably genuine. Her use of the prose poem form is particularly suited to profundity hidden in the everyday, to a kind of casual brilliance. It strikes me that, more important than being poetic, Ms. Benis has tried to be a feeling human, and then has worked carefully to craft that discipline into beauty.

—Killarney Clary, author of By Common Salt, Who Whispered Near Me, and Potential Stranger. Recipient of a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, she has taught the Graduate Writing Workshops at the University of California, Irvine and the University of Iowa.

On David Blair: David Blair"s poems come out of what Greil Marcus once called "the old weird America" (still very much with us, underneath the fog of coiffed media blondes and politics-as-spam). His citizens are at play in a long-running tragicomedy. I like how the poems imply that the slightest quirks of a person"s character govern the insistent arc of karma. He reminds me a bit of Richard Hugo or Weldon Kees—a cosmopolitan sensibility at loose ends on the country"s highways and byways—though in sensibility and formal means he is like neither. Blair has a terrific ear—taut without being high-strung, charming without being precocious, intent without being alarmed. He"s a pleasure to read and hear.

—David Rivard, whose most recent book is Bewitched Playground. He teaches at Tufts University.

On Jaswinder Bolina: I endorse with great enthusiasm the poems of Jaswinder Bolina. I firmly believe he is a poet whom we will be hearing about in the not-too-distant future. The foundations of his work are complex, and I will attempt to lay them out here. Clearly, one would deduce from reading these poems, here is someone who has studied philosophy in a more than casual manner. An acquaintance with the ideas of Wittgenstein illuminates a reading of his poems. Jaswinder"s work resembles at least three contemporary American poets: John Ashbery, James Tate, and Dean Young.The last of these influences or resemblances is not surprising: he studied with Dean Young at Loyola in Chicago. As for the other two, I find him more grounded than Ashbery and thus more engaging, and just as funny as Tate.

—Richard Tillinghast, author of seven books of poetry as well as Damaged Grandeur, a critical memoir of the poet Robert Lowell. He teaches in the M.F.A. program at the University of Michigan.

On Jennifer Boyden: Jennifer Boyden"s poetry is haunting, empowered by a crisp but lyrical language. It"s quietly thoughtful and emotionally engaging.

—Nance Van Winckel, author of four books of poetry and three short story collections. She teaches in the graduate creative writing programs of Vermont College and Eastern Washington University.

On Susan Browne: Susan Browne has been my student for several years; I"ve watched her work harder than anyone I know to bring her poems to fruition. She"s funny, heartfelt, unabashedly emotional and narrative. I find her complete humanity so bracing.

It was difficult to choose what to send, but I chose three poems that I think convey her irreverence and humor. I especially admire the way "Life is Too Hard" begins with the narrator driving home from a funeral, and then delivers up hysterical laughter instead of the expected earnestness. Browne"s poems remind me that the best humor is about deadly serious issues.

—Kim Addonizio, author of three books of poetry and a collection of stories. Her new poetry collection, What Is This Thing Called Love, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton.

On Darrell Burton: Darrell Burton passed away tragically in December of 2002, just days after completing his poetry manuscript Weather Within. An accidental fire claimed his life in his Bloomington, Indiana apartment; he was 41. Before coming to Indiana University, Darrell lived a full life: navy shipman, chef, college scholarship basketball player, and successful fashion model with features in magazines like Ebony. At the time of his passing, Darrell was collaborating with his good friend Eric Dickerson on a memoir of the pro football star"s life.

What"s more, Weather Within was in quite different form just a few weeks before he passed away—in weeks if not days Darrell managed to turn what was a rough collection of terrific poems into that elusive thing, a book. The poems achieve a blues-aesthetic, both in their frank discussion of Darrell"s frequent wrestling with depression, and by overcoming such blues feelings with lyric form, blues humor, and casual precision. The poems manage to be direct and plainspoken, yet always musical and complex. Whether dealing with growing up in Arkansas, rendering the contradictions and diction of race, or reveling in a sexuality inseparable from spirit, Darrell"s poetry seeks a refreshing take on all we take for granted.

There"s a kind of unique pleasure in reading his poems, poems that are much like Darrell himself: stylish and effortless, handsome, full of a soft-spokenness that belies (or is because of) a fierce and well-thought intelligence and attention. He had a smile that wouldn"t quit. Yet there"s often a deep sadness in his work, "A Balance of Blues & Angels" as one poem titled it. Taken as a whole, Weather Within is a remarkable debut, and would (and surely soon will) place him among the best poets of his generation.

—Cathy Bowman and Kevin Young. Cathy Bowman has published two poetry collections and is an associate professor at Indiana University. Kevin Young is the author of three books of poems and is Ruth Lilly Professor of Poetry at Indiana University.

On John Casteen: John Casteen is extremely talented, very dedicated, and a marvelous young writer. He always had a raw and edgy talent, an energy and kinetic spirit that were very impressive. Over the course of his time with us at UVA, he smoothed and solidified that talent and energy into finishing poems that were very impressive. He has no fear about tackling big and serious subjects. He has no fear of hard work. He has a real ear for the strong, Anglo-Saxon beat of words; he has a sure hand for keeping them in order and making them sing. A rare combination of intelligence, poetic gift, raw talent, scholarly ability, and hard work have made him into one of the most impressive people to have ever gone through my hands in the undergraduate world. He is destined, I think, for grand things.

—Charles Wright, Pulitzer Prize winner, Souder Family Professor of English, University of Virginia. His most recent book is A Short History of the Shadow: Poems.

On Alicia L. Conroy: In haunting ways, Alicia Conroy"s "Mud-Colored Beauties of the Plains" not only recalls Márquez"s "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" in its sense of a mythic past beset by modern society, but it steps back a page. Conroy"s story springs from the source of creation—the mud bed of "fluvial life from amid tree roots and marsh marigolds." Her fish-woman rises from her mud bed beset by an America bent on commercializing everything and everyone. Conroy"s story is a dramatic, lively, and vigorous investigation of our times. This is wonderful fiction, true fiction, fiction in the finest tradition of all that fiction offers. It runs against the flow; it resists convention, makes me believe; and its many currents linger in my heart.

—Wendell Mayo, author of three books of fiction: Centaur of the North: Stories; a novel-in-stories, In Lithuanian Wood; and B. Horror and Other Stories. He is a recent recipient of an NEA and Creative Writing Fulbright to Lithuania. He teaches at Bowling Green State University.

On Mark Conway: My recommending Mark Conway to the Emerging Writer"s issue is a bit of a farce, mostly because Mr. Conway was recommended to me first—by virtually everyone who has ever read his poetry. I first encountered Mr. Conway at the M.F.A. program at Bennington College, when rumor of his talent was whispered by an enthusiastic chorus to anyone who would listen. And we were all listening. Being a reflexive contrarian, I naturally doubted that anyone could be that talented, so I set upon my own investigation. And I discovered that for once the masses had it right: Mark Conway"s poetry has real power. The images smolder, the moments resonate long after the page has been turned, the sometimes beautiful, sometimes devastating phrasing haunts the psyche. More than imagery, nicely rendered moments and wordsmithing, however, is Mr. Conway"s innate ability to mine emotional depths, surfacing with that which shatters us, letting it dance in our eyes and our hearts until we are overcome, awash in pathos, grateful.

But let the Recommender"s carnival bark be rightly forgotten: experience Mark Conway"s poetry firsthand, be sucked in, get overtaken, marvel at who you were before.

—Jaime Clarke, author of the novel We"re So Famous, and founding editor of the literary magazine Post Road.

On Rachel DeWoskin: Rachel DeWoskin"s poems have astonishing dash and verve: they are fun to read, and they cut deep; they know when to stop and how to surprise. Her years in China give her material but she writes about it with a smart, revealing precision that is the opposite of mere touristic exoticism. I think she will publish a distinguished book of poems. She writes with an unmistakable distinction.

—Robert Pinsky teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University, and in 1997 was named the United States Poet Laureate and Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

On Patrick Michael Finn: I"m proud to nominate Patrick Michael Finn, one of my most accomplished, prolific former students and one of my favorite writers. Mr. Finn remains someone I talk about quite often, though he graduated in 1997, and someone whose stories have never left my mind. I still remember his characters—lonely Joliet teenagers struggling with religion and family, angry fathers, fading beauties. I mention him at Bread Loaf, to editors, to agents, because I think he is clearly one of the most talented writers I know, having finished with me a collection of short stories as well as a novel.

This entry is a wonderful piece of fiction, set as are all his stories in his native Illinois. Mr. Finn has a command of place and character and dialogue that make his fiction resonant and regional at the same time; as someone who writes of my native state, these qualities make his fiction valuable for me. As Philip Levine writes of work and Detroit, and Ellen Slezak writes of Polish-Catholic Detroit, Patrick Michael Finn has created his own Joliet.

—Susan Straight, author of a novel-in-stories and four novels, the latest, Highwire Moon, a National Book Award Finalist. She has taught at the University of California, Riverside, where she founded and co-directs the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts.

On Julie Funderburk: Fresh from the undergraduate program at Chapel Hill, Julie Funderburk was in my first class of M.F.A. poetry students in the fall of 1992. Since then we have been colleagues and fellow poets, and I have been witness to more than ten years of development in her poetry and poetics. Essentially Julie is a lyric poet whose work compresses narrative elements—and she is a narrative poet whose words are alive with the strum of the lyre. There is a supreme tension in her work between the assuring surface of craft and the wilder waves of impulse. Many of her poems including the ones herein seek to retrieve an instance in time by seizing, illuminating, and ultimately transforming it. Like Robert Penn Warren, she is a poet whose major subject is time and how events and people endure through the various lenses of separation and distortion. In an age in which vagueness, fakery, and linguistic contortions pose as intelligence and music, Julie Funderburk"s poems are extremely valuable because they are beautiful, resonant, and complicated in their understanding of the human heart.

I love the wonder, wisdom, and sanity of these poems. I have no doubt Julie Funderburk"s work will find a wide audience and book publication.

—Stuart Dischell, author of three collections of poetry: Good Hope Road, Evenings & Avenues, and Dig Safe. He is an associate professor in the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at U.N.C. Greensboro.

On Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski: Alexai grew up and still lives in a Chicago neighborhood known as Pilsen/Little Village. It"s the largest barrio east of L.A. The neighborhood is the locus of Mexican culture in the Midwest. It is plagued by the usual economic problems that plague most immigrations, and in particular by street gangs.

What attracts me to Alexai"s writing is its humanity and its authenticity. I know the neighborhood and he gets it right, but I don"t mean authentic merely in terms of streets, slang, and folkways; I mean authentic in terms of the literary tradition that he"s writing in—one senses the great Chicago writers of neighborhood behind this—Algren and James Farrell. Algren especially because of the humor, the vivid details, and the vitality. The writing, thanks to the authentic voice, has a natural—even a rough—quality of anecdotes strung together. The voice serves as the raconteur, the storyteller, but beneath the voice there is the writer creating form and resonance so that the final effect of the story is far greater than the sum of its anecdotes.

It won"t be long before he has a book, I think, and will no longer qualify as emerging. This is a good time, an exciting time early in what will be a career, to catch a young writer with a genuine voice.

—Stuart Dybek, author of the story collections The Coast of Chicago and Childhood and other Neighborhoods, the forthcoming novel-in-stories I Sailed With Magellan, and a collection of poetry, Brass Knuckles.

On Dobby Gibson: Dobby Gibson"s poems are remarkable for their enactment of thought. Even at their most associational, there is always a syntax of argument at work which lends his sometimes serpentine sentences forceful momentum. Even when he"s flying by the seat of his pants, there"s a splendid sense of a presiding, living intelligence.

—Dean Young, author of five books of poems, most recently Skid.

On Kathleen Graber: The method of these poems is to juxtapose several elements, forming a kind of scaffolding, a structure to enable both narration and meditation. These long-lined, expansive poems proceed through this sort of triangulation, melding disparate elements so that the whole becomes larger than the sum of its parts. Waitresses talk in a diner while the narrator reads Montale"s poems and thinks about the nature of love. Walter Benjamin"s ideas about the mechanical reproduction of art rub against a narrative of an experience in a copy shop and a woman"s wish to conceive a child. This is a speaker we come to know as a sensibility, encountering the art and the ideas that help her to frame the questions of her own life. The poems are surprising, bracing, and smart, and they arrive at an unexpected emotional weight. I can"t wait to have a book"s worth of them.

—Mark Doty, author of six books of poems, most recently Source, and three volumes of nonfiction prose, the newest of which is Still Life with Oysters and Lemon. He teaches in the graduate program at the University of Houston.

On Todd Hearon: "Ancestors" shows the quiet virtues for which he is becoming known as a poet. It has subtle imagery (the wasp, transposed into the ghostly shapes of the ancestors; the loaves of phantom bread); it has narrative momentum without being tediously anecdotal; most of all, it is alive in its various iambic rhythms, never coercively regular in its metric but never straying out of earshot of the master pentameter. Hearon uses repetition knowingly and expressively to create a dreamlike atmosphere for this oneiric tale: the key words that repeat, "mine," "past," "here," and "loaves," gather mesmerizing force as they turn and return. It is a lovely and delicate poem, and I recommend it heartily.

—Rosanna Warren, author of three collections of poems and a verse translation of Euripides. She is Emma MacLachan Metcalf Professor of the Humanities at Boston University.

On James Heflin: I have known James for about four years, and have watched his rapid maturation as a poet. His poems combine intelligence, whimsy, emotion, and a sure sense of rhythm. His lines, whether long or short, are always exactly the right length. They follow the natural movements of the poem at the same time that they create them, until subject and form fall into step. These are solid, worthy poems.

—Wyn Cooper, author of three books of poems, most recently Secret Address.

On Christopher Hennessy: Mr. Hennessy"s breathtaking poems interrogate the boundaries between the physical and the spiritual, the charged space between Eros and Psyche. Part incantation, part dream, part gesture, his poems help us to enter into our own bodies again, to feel as if for the first time the thrill of a lover"s caress or the sting of a fresh wound. Beneath this poet"s lyrical gaze, the flesh is at once perfect and troubled, object of desire and yet unattainable, "a moon polished bark/burnished. Like his skin"—and as soon as we try to touch it, already spoiled, broken. Ultimately, Henessey"s poems bear loving witness to our moment, when such disheartening developments as spiritual estrangement, AIDS, and environmental degradation, instead of further dividing us from one another, become opportunities for a profoundly nourishing empathic connection.

—Rafael Campo, author of four books of poetry and, most recently, The Healing Art: A Doctor"s Black Bag of Poetry. He is a practicing physician at Harvard Medical School and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

On Angie Hogan: Angie Hogan"s poems are marked by a clear and sardonic intelligence, a wit that is reflected in the suppleness of line and crisp allure of her images. Although her subject matter is often difficult, she is never sentimental, eschewing the easy emotional tug for an unflinching poetic eye. "Paint me into the set of Parsifal" demands the lover in "Insolent Monologue," and we thrill to the sass and dash of a voice assured enough to declare by poem"s end: "I"m more/naked than an autumn Alp." An imagination that can find exuberance in such unlikely spots is one I would bank upon. I predict a vibrant future for Ms. Hogan in her quest to become the best writer she can be—which, if present accomplishments are any indication, means that she will be a formidable presence in the literary world.

—Rita Dove, former Poet Laureate of the United States, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize.

On Rodney Jack: Rodney Jack has mastered Dickinson"s imperative: he tells the truth and tells it slant. His poems are marked by a welcome, persuasive, Classical restraint. The poet"s sensibility, and the particulars of his autobiography, smoulder behind all his work, but his gifts for the telling detail, for a moving intimacy of tone, and for a syntax both suggestive and energetic, are reserved for looking out, at the baffling world.

—Ellen Bryant Voigt, author of six books of poetry, most recently Shadow of Heaven, as well as a collection of essays.

On Tanya Larkin: One of the things I admire about Tanya Larkin"s work is how perfectly accessible it is, while at the same time lush with invention, music, obliquity, and all the other thrills we"ve come to recognize as visionary writing. The occasion in her poems is often an exact place which has the odd property of being self-generated, self-conscious, and shifting with tones, implication, and other satellite places. That her poems are sometimes settings that threaten to speak for themselves (each in their own vernacular, music, and abiding form) makes her a slyly metaphysical poet in the tradition of Bishop and O"Hara. Her poems are ferociously precise, which is to say physical, not only in terms of the landscapes, interiors, and quandaries they explore, but also in their idioms. The work makes for a beautiful strange voice, at once solitary and inclusive, quiet and loud.

—Peter Richards, author of two books of poetry: Oubliette and Nude Siren. He teaches at Tufts University.

On Teresa Leo: In commenting about her own work, Teresa Leo cites Louise Gluck"s line, "All my life I have worshipped the wrong gods," and goes on to say that her poems explore a similar revelation: what happens when one is drawn, for whatever reason, to the wrong partner. They chronicle the relationships that move from agency and desire to hesitation and loss. To which I would add: they do this with great linguistic verve. Teresa is a phrase-maker, and she drives her poems down the page with terrific energy and surprise.

—Stephen Dunn, author of twelve books of poems, most recently Local Visitations. Different Hours won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001.

On Jay Leeming: Jay Leeming is the most brilliant of the younger poets that I have read lately. He is a high-stepper, and he risks a lot with each brief line. He is not one of those who puts down the name of his laundromat and everything that has happened to him since he was six years old. He doesn"t try to make you feel close to him. He simply embarks on a thought. This little poem will eventually become famous like some of the tiny poems of e.e. cummings. So this man has a lot of ability. His wit does not prevent him from writing things that move the reader. His language is clean and swift, and I recommend him without any reservation.

—Robert Bly, author of a number of books of poems, including Morning Poems and most recently, The Night Abraham Called to the Stars.

On Sarah Maclay: Ms. Maclay has a superb lyric gift, a remarkable imagistic clarity, and a constant sense of invention. Her recent prose poems—a departure for her—strike me as some of the most gracious and compelling of the genre. She is melding the concerns of her more fiercely lyric pieces with a more elongated music phrasing, and the result is miraculous.

Sarah Maclay is without question an astonishingly gifted young poet; I believe she has a truly remarkable career ahead of her. Her poems have the fierce lyric clarity I"ve described above and a deep, rich impassionment that are both breathtaking. I am often stunned at the power, beauty, and profound originality of her work. Already well-published, it is only a matter of time before Ms. Maclay has a significant book publication.

—David St. John, author of eight collections of poetry, most recently Prism. He is editor-at-large of The Antioch Review and Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

On Kathryn Maris: Kathryn Maris is an emerging poet whose truly original work deserves more notice. "The End of Envy" I praise for its ambition—imagining a psychological world where edifices are destroyed and only staircases remain, and where the speaker continues to climb from the surprising subject position of mother. Her poems gleam like gems, flashing brilliant emotion, wit, and craft.

—Julia Kasdorf, author of two books of poetry, Sleeping Preacher and Eve"s Striptease, as well as a collection of essays. She is an Associate Professor of English and Director of the M.F.A. Program at the Pennsylvania State University.

On Mark M. Martin: Mark M. Martin is a recent graduate of the M.F.A. program at Florida International University. I am a big fan of his work—so much so that I solicited him for an anthology that my husband and I edited that includes such poets as Andrew Hudgins, Colette Inez, and Stephen Dunn. His poem has already been singled out favorably in one of the anthology"s first reviews. Mark"s exactness of image and precise language have already landed his poetry in a number of magazines.

—Denise Duhamel, author of thirteen books and chapbooks, the most recent of which is Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems. She is an assistant professor at Florida International University in Miami.

On Ted Mathys: When I first read the announcement for the Ploughshares Emerging Writers Issue I immediately thought of Ted Mathys, a poet whose talent reminds one of Hart Crane, and not just because Ted is also from Ohio and now lives in New York, but because of the preternatural facility for language they share as well as the stunning vision of this world that most of us would not perceive without their poetry. From the first poems he sent me blind as a portfolio for admission into a poetry workshop at Carleton College in Minnesota, I have been impressed by his voice that so marks this time while resonating past and future. Since his graduation two years ago, we have worked more closely than ever, even while he was writing in Hong Kong, and in this time his work has hit warp-speed, completing two excellent, cohesive full-length collections and a chapbook.

—Greg Hewett, author of two volumes of poetry: Red Suburb and To Collect the Flesh. He is Professor of English at Carleton College.

On Jill McDonough: Jill McDonough"s poems are lyrical founts of energy and insight and humor and empathy. She"s a daring poet, formally sophisticated yet pushing the boundaries of form at every turn. In the four or five years I"ve known her poems, their subjects have dazzled me: a bumptious American girl teaching in Japan and loving the language, a gorgeous exotic dancer in a local club, really tender love poems, really tough (what else?) Catallus translations, and a long sonnet sequence about murderers who"ve been executed throughout American history. I want to follow the trajectory of McDonough"s work, its twists and turns—it will never fail to be interesting.

—Gail Mazur, author of four books of poems, most recently They Can"t Take That Away from Me. She is Writer-in-Residence at Emerson College.

On Emily Moore: While the subject of Emily Moore"s poems may often seem to be frailty, her true subject is forcefulness. This young poet manages to glance in the direction of her great namesake, Marianne, the doyenne of armor-beaters, while keeping her eye fixed on the matter in hand and forging her own sturdy chain-mail.

—Paul Muldoon, author of numerous books of poetry, including the 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning Moy Sand and Gravel. He teaches at Princeton University and the University of Oxford.

On Michael Morse: I am eager to nominate Michael Morse. I find a keen and seamless craftsmanship in Morse"s poems, which are beautifully understated and distinctly well made. They are quiet, but they have dark undertows, and I find some of them a little heartbreaking. There is real quality and depth in the poetry of this gifted and caring young poet.

—Edward Hirsch, author of six books of poems, most recently Lay Back the Darkness, and three prose books. He is the president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

On Kathy Nilsson: Kathy Nilsson"s work is strangely stern—beautiful without being pleasant, compassionate but not at all sappy, sometimes funny but more often wry. It was my privilege to have her as a student in the Bennington M.F.A. program for the term that she was polishing and assembling her manuscript, and I had the experience, in poem after poem, of the smack of fresh air, what Marianne Moore called "gusto," and also of infinite tenderness. She is word-drunk; ferociously precise; a jealous guardian of the privileges of the errant imagination, the illogical but intuitive leap.

—April Bernard, author of three collections of poetry, most recently Swan Electric, as well as a novel. She teaches at Bennington College.

On Jeff Parker: Jeff Parker has taken two fiction workshops with me at St. Petersburg Summer Literary Seminars in Russia. I have enjoyed and admired his humorous, absurdist stories, written with a light touch, easy-going sentences, yet with a great deal of discipline and compactness. In a playful attitude, he manages to develop drama and to render character idiosyncrasies in a highly original way. I am a great fan of his work.

—Josip Novakovich, associate professor of English at Penn State. His books have won an American Book Award, a Whiting Award, and fellowships from The Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA.

On Jeffrey Pethybridge: I"ve known Jeff since 1996 when, as my undergraduate student at Old Dominion University, he first attended one of several classes we would have together. The high level of his energy, his seriousness, his palpable joy in reading and shaping poetry was immediately apparent, and it was soon thereafter that he became more a collaborator than a student. He is now, once again, my student in the English Ph.D. program at University of Missouri, studying here with Sherod Santos, Lynne McMahon, and myself. As any one of the above-named poets will attest, Jeff is the genuine article, a passionate student of language, possessor of a brilliant mind, and a young poet whose work has already attained a level of intellectual acuity that is uncommon among poets in general, and especially rare among young, emerging poets.

As the work itself will demonstrate, Jeff is interested in pressing language for information, interested in constructing poetic texts that continue to yield results through successive readings, and more interested in constructing literary artifacts than in constructing narratives of self-aggrandizement.

—Scott Cairns, author of five collections of poetry, most recently Philokalia: New & Selected Poems (2002). He is professor of English at the University of Missouri.

On Stephanie Pippin: Stephanie Pippin has my absolute highest recommendation. Because Stephanie"s work is so utterly original, it is difficult to know quite how to describe it. It"s exacting, like Dickinson"s, and characterized by a similar intelligence governed primarily by intuition, or that"s the sense it leaves me with—in the way that excellence, true excellence, always looks effortless. She"s a writer from whom I feel confident we"ll be hearing much of in the future.

—Carl Phillips, author of six books of poetry, most recently Rock Harbor (2002). Phillips teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.

On Christina Pugh: I was taken with Christina"s poems when I first heard them, and when I read them my sense of her extraordinary talent was confirmed. She seems to me quite simply one of the most promising younger poets I have run across in years, and it is gratifying to see that she is quickly achieving the kind of recognition her distinction deserves.

In the foreword to her chapbook manuscript, Gardening at Dusk, which I selected for the new Wells College Press Emerging Writers Series, I wrote: "The reader of Christina Pugh"s poetry enters a realm of change, mystery, and beauty. Objects metamorphose—flowers, paintings, a forgotten dress—melding into the unfamiliar while remaining, or becoming, luminous versions of what they already are. Language is the agent of these transformations, and language, and the ways we use and are used by it, is the subject of many of her poems. In them and through them, we experience a poet"s wonder at words; we accompany her in her process of discovery and creation where words unfurl into images which transmute into languages we can inhabit…"

Bruce Bennett, author of six books of poems and sixteen poetry chapbooks, Associate Editor at State Street Press, and Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Wells College in Aurora, New York.

On Sadaf Qureshi: I find her work full of life—carefully observed, and expressed in language that is equally alive to gesture and nuance. Her poems surprise and satisfy, as when "used friends/look new in their unused clothes" or a wedding guest whispers a phrase the reader first takes as an epithet, then realizes it is meant as praise ("Patient Colony"). Her every line is packed, in a poetic style that condenses without confusing.

—Joyce Peseroff, author of three books of poetry: The Hardness Scale, A Dog in the Lifeboat, and Mortal Education. She is Visiting Professor and Poet in Residence at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

On Minal Singh: Drawing upon a keen intellect, historic and mythic images, and from her own Indian heritage, Minal makes poems that address essential mysteries. What compels me is how she is able to shape an image that offers revelation, and yet she retains what"s ineffable and unknowable. Like an Escher print, "dots" become "birds/with wing-length and body length." Singh"s poetry appeals to aesthetic that ranges across artistic and scientific planes of existence, that straddles physical and metaphysical worlds. She is an emerging voice that will be heard for a long time.

—Martin Lammon, author of the collection of poems News from Where I Live, winner of the Arkansas Poetry Award. He is also editor of Written in Water, Written in Stone: Twenty Years of Poets on Poetry.

On Brittani Sonnenberg: I am delighted to nominate Brittani Sonnenberg, a senior at Harvard, and a member of my Creative Writing class last fall. Brit is a joy in every way: smart, unpretentious, perceptive, and adventurous. As a member of an improv comedy group, she is used to taking risks; you can see in her work, I think, a complete willingness to go over the top. In this particular piece, too, you can see her familiarity with worlds far from home. Having grown up abroad, and having worked as a reporter in Cambodia, she brings to the page an understanding of the world unusual for an undergrad.

And what she"s made of what she knows! I loved this piece for its sad and funny truth; but also for its timing, and aplomb, and stitchery. Please note the motifs with which she connects one vignette to the next, for example. A joy, those delicate, surprising "rhymes"—no?

My class was, amazingly, Brit"s first fiction workshop. I am happy to report she is currently working on a creative thesis, a collection of stories, and that she is planning to become a writer. This would be her first published story.

—Gish Jen, author of the novels Typical American and Mona in the Promised Land, and the story collection Who"s Irish?

On Rebecca Soppe: Ms. Soppe"s work is nuanced and vivid, distinguished by a strong voice, a bold, experimental style, and wonderfully long sentences. In "The Pantyhose Man," the narrator is the collective spirit of the women who answer phones at a large Midwestern hotel. What begins as a comic account of how these women contend with obscene phone calls becomes, in Ms. Soppe"s hands, an urban myth of uncanny psychological resonance.

—David Leavitt, author of several novels and story collections, among them Family Dancing, The Lost Language of Cranes, While England Sleeps, and Arkansas. The recipient of grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA, Leavitt teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Florida.

On Pireeni Sundaralingan: Pireeni Sundaralingan depicts a straightforward urgency in everything she writes. She is from Sri Lanka, and her poetry captures elements of that country"s ethnic violence and cultural tensions. However, a credit to her and her poetry, she strives for a language that embraces a sober beauty through precision. Maybe the directness in her voice has much to do with her science background: Pireeni works on a poem till there"s a crossing of borders, physically and psychologically. the speakers are troubled, a long ways from cultural homes and loved ones, but they always have an unflinching ability to forgive and celebrate human possibility. They move on and endure, but they never forget personal histories. Pireeni"s best poems possess a strength of character. There"s great promise in this young poet. I believe her poetry.

—Yusef Komunyakaa, author of numerous books of poetry, including Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize. He teaches at Princeton University.

On Pauline Uchmanowicz: Her poetry to me seems quite brilliant. I"ve been reading her recently completed manuscript, Trip Meter, and consider it to be first-rate. How shall I put it—maybe the most forthright thing I can say is that, when it"s published, I"d be honored to write one of the blurbs for its backcover. My blurb would praise the poems for their lyricism and wit, their passion and intelligence. I would say that Trip Meter is one of the finest first books I"ve ever read.

—Bill Knott, associate professor at Emerson College in Boston. His many volumes of poetry include, most recently, Laugh at the End of the World: Collected Comic Poems 1969–1999 (2000).

On Alissa Valles: What I find unusual in Alissa Valles"s poems is a very strong expression of intellectual passion invested into the historical—or strictly personal—world. Her poetry is coming close to a kind of a "dynamic wisdom" maybe best exemplified in poems like "Two Gods."

I think there"s an exceptional promise in her work, in her spiritual energy. She"s interestingly different from her peers. I do trust in her talent and I do recommend her poems.

—Adam Zagajewski, author of numerous books of poetry and memoir, most recently Without End: New and Selected Poems and Another Beauty. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston.

On Kris Vervaecke: "The Quarrel" is a brilliantly written, searing glimpse into the life of Staszek Czyzowski, Polish survivor of World War II camps, and his ruined wife, Kasia. The writer"s exquisite portrait of this stubborn, furious man, rendered without a bit of sentimentality, is so devastating it takes my breath away each time I reread it. The story is especially compelling in its understanding of human love and pity, basic and untempered by romanticism.

I cannot praise "The Quarrel" highly enough. I have enormous admiration for this story, for its clear-sighted, stark emotional intelligence and for its prose, which is beautiful and under absolute control.

—Lan Samantha Chang, author of Hunger: A Novella and Stories, and a forthcoming novel, Sanctuary. She teaches at the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers and at Harvard University.

On Sharmila Voorakkara: I have been enthusiastic about Sharmila Voorakkara"s poetry since the first poem she wrote for my poetry writing class several years ago. From the beginning, her perspectives were strange and compelling, not merely willfully odd, and her language and imagery were original, both wry and brilliantly awry. I was pleased to have my own impressions confirmed last spring by Charles Wright, who called me after seeing Sharmila"s poetry thesis at the University of Virginia; he was exuberant about her work, saying that no one else in America was writing poems like hers.

—Elton Glaser, author of five full-length collections of poetry, most recently Pelican Tracks (2003). He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Akron, and edits the Akron Series in Poetry.

On Nicole Walker: It is with genuinely boundless enthusiasm that I recommend Nicole Walker. As her dissertation director, I have had the opportunity to work closely with Walker in numerous venues over the past few years. She has ever proven to be a passionate and original reader of the canons of poetry, one whose energies extend beyond the page into the luminous intersections of Sight and Vision, Reading and Invention. She is a poet who stands on her own holy ground and sees through her own clear eyes.

Nicole Walker is also a poet of great lyric gifts. Over the years, she has acquired the quiet confidence necessary to profoundest play. Ludens and farbens overlap effortlessly in her words, and her most recent poems are capable of ethical profundity without the slightest didacticism. She is surely on track to being one of the memorable poets of her generation.

Nicole Walker has my full faith and confidence and admiration.

—Donald Revell, author of eight collections of poetry, most recently My Mojave. He is a Professor of English at the University of Utah.

On Ted Weesner, Jr.: I first encountered Ted Weesner, Jr. and his work when I heard him read at the Bread Loaf Writers" Conference and also at the Pen/New England Discovery awards. In both cases I was struck by his vivid characters and by the edgy, intimate, contemporary voice of his narrators. Later on the page, I found myself admiring that voice all over again but also appreciating how carefully Ted sets his stories and how well he understands the importance of earning a living. His characters are always in the grip of where they live and what they do for money. Francie in "Tuscaloosa" is no exception. She seeks to change her life in the traditional American way, by moving. And of course it works, and doesn"t work. What I also particularly admire about "Tuscaloosa" is the story"s fearless investigation of the complicated commingling of race and sex. Amrit, Francie"s boss at the pharmacy, with his scar and his feather duster and his flagrant suggestions, is a terrific character. I relished every line of his dialogue and was only sorry when, in the best kind of way, he gets his come-uppance.

—Margot Livesey, author of four novels, Eva Moves the Furniture, Homework, Criminals, and The Missing World, a collection of stories, Learning by Heart, and is the co-editor of Writing about Literature: An Anthology for Reading and Writing.

On Kevin Wilson: Kevin Wilson"s stories show us a world that is both real and full of illusion. One imagines the skies that sit over these towns are always a particularly vibrant shade of blue. The characters are people we almost know, and yet their lives are heightened, peculiar, both more dazzling and more tragic than our own. Kevin doesn"t write fantasy at all, and yet he never exactly writes a straight reality either. In this story, "Blowing Up on the Spot," a woman works in a Scrabble tile factory after her parents have spontaneously combusted. It sounds like it would wind up being precious, but it isn"t. In turning the world not upside down but maybe twenty degrees on its side, he forces us to look at our own lives in a new and slightly off-kilter way. I believe Kevin is a real talent and I am thrilled to endorse him.

—Ann Patchett, author of The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, The Magician"s Assistant, and Bel Canto.

On Beth Woodcome: In my opinion and in the opinions of many teachers, writers, and readers of contemporary poetry I am in touch with, Beth Woodcome, still in her mid-twenties, is one of the most talented, original, and hard-working poets in the country.

Franz Wright, author of many collections of poetry and translation, including most recently Walking to Martha"s Vineyard.