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Winning the Stan and Tom Wick first book prize (The Apprentice of Fever) and having my second book of poems (The World Underneath) published by the Kent State University Press has affected my life in more ways than I can count!
I was working at a temp job on Wall Street when, out of the dreamy blue ethers, the voice of an angel, Fairy God Mother to poets near and far, telephoned to tell me that I had won the prize. In my low ebb of confidence (or is it the relative lack of consideration for poetry in the United States in general?) I thought that my Fairy God Mother was a hoax. But no such trick was being played, for I was soon receiving kind advice from Maggie Anderson as she helped turn my manuscript into a book, I was soon stepping off a plane for what would become the first of many visits to Kent, I was soon inside Alice Cone’s car, we were soon talking (that has—thankfully—never abated!), and going to a restaurant where I was introduced to a whole community of Wick folks. I was soon in an apartment that had been granted to me during my week-long stay, I was eyeing a basket of sweets and flowers and coffee and fruit and books, books, books, I was soon teaching my first poetry class on a university campus, I was giving a reading (or was I passing out?) with Marilyn Hacker. This wasn’t Wheel of Fortune, folks. . . it was the Hospitality of the Wick Poetry Center Show, under the steady stewardship of Maggie Anderson.
Since that first trip, I have taught poetry workshops steadily, at New School University, City University of New York, and Rutgers, where I directed a nationally prominent reading series. None of these positions would have considered me had I not published a book of poems (and winning a national prize didn't hurt, either!). Nor is it likely that I would I have been awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in poetry or a Chancellor’s Fellowship to complete my Ph.D. at CUNY’s Graduate Center. Not that I’m a slouch, mind you—but the Wick Prize was the sweet zephyr that sent me on my way.
How does one offer enough thanks for such a Center—one of only five in the U.S. devoted exclusively to poetry? How does one offer thanks to Will Underwood, Director of Kent State University Press, and his truly remarkable crafts-folk who take words and convert them into objects of art? Does my body bow down low enough to the ground to thank such amazing, selfless people as the Wicks for the generosity that transformed family grief into an abundance of open-hearted gifts? I’m not so sure there is a way to properly thank these people.
Other than continuing in the path that the Wick Prize led us to in the first place—that of offering our own gifts, our own writing, back to the World. And I do say Us: for I know I am not alone in how I feel. Honorée Jeffers expressed poems through her tears at her 25th Anniversary reading in Kent last November; Victoria Redel and I spoke of and celebrated our good fortune at a lunch in New York not long ago; and the look on Djelloul Marbrook’s face when he read his poems at the Associated Writing Programs conference in Chicago in February, 2009 conveyed his soft-spoken, gentlemanly gratitude. We are all part of the community that the Wick Family has created. And there’s more than enough gratitude from all of us to go around.
Richard Tayson
http://www.richardtayson.com
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