Eleanor Ross Taylor wins $100,000 Poetry Prize!

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Congratulations to Eleanor Ross Taylor, author Captive Voices, for winning the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Prize for Poetry!  The annual prize is sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.  

Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry magazine had this to say in the official prize statement:  

"Until the excellent selected poems, Captive Voices, was published by LSU Press last year, virtually all of Taylor’s work was out of print. Her slow production (six books in 50 years), dislike of poetry readings (“It seems to me that it’s all for the person and not the poetry”), and unfashionable fidelity to narrative and clarity haven’t helped matters. And yet, as is so often the case, what’s been bad for the career has been good for the poems. With their intricately odd designs and careful, off-kilter music, their vital characters and volatile silences, the poems have a hard-won, homemade fatedness to them. You can feel their future." 

Eleanor Ross Taylor Awarded 2010 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize [The Poetry Foundation]