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Walt Whitman Spins in His Grave
First book awards are apt to be contentious. The major ones—Yale Younger Poets, the APR/Honickman, Cave Canem, the Walt Whitman—produce winners that are as often ignored as praised. In poetry, everything is arguable. But the 2013 Academy of American Poets’ Walt Whitman Award winner is especially distressing. Judge John Ashbery chose Chris Hosea‘s Put Your Hands In, which has been issued by Louisiana State University Press. I have to confess that I haven’t read the book and will not, based on the odious excerpts from it published in the Spring-Summer 2014 issue of American Poets.Read More