Yale Series of Younger Poets explained

Yale Series of Younger Poets
Country:United States
Language:English
Discipline:Poetry
Publisher:Yale University Press
Pub Date:Annually since
Number Of Books:114
Oclc:1605127

The Yale Series of Younger Poets is an annual event of Yale University Press aiming to publish the debut collection of a promising American poet. Established in 1918, the Younger Poets Prize is the longest-running annual literary award in the United States.

Each year, the Younger Poets Competition accepts submissions from American poets who have not previously published a book of poetry. Once the judge has chosen a winner, the Press publishes a book-length manuscript of the winner's poetry as the next volume in the series. All poems must be original, and only one manuscript may be entered at a time.

Rules and eligibility

Contest requirements were first articulated in the summer of 1920. The series had already published four books, all written by Yale students, and the judges sought to attract a nationwide pool of applicants. A promotional statement gave the following, somewhat vague eligibility requirements: "Anyone is eligible provided he (or she) is young and comparatively unknown. The age limit is understood to be about thirty." A formal set of rules was adopted in 1924. In addition to specifying page limits and other manuscript requirements, these new rules limited the contest to American citizens younger than 30. However, current rules allow poets of any age who have not published a book of poetry to be considered.[1] Although the contest was briefly opened to any writer of English-language poetry under Auden's judgeship, it has remained limited to American citizens ever since.

History

20th century

The Younger Poets Series was established in 1919 by Clarence Day, whose brother George Parmly Day founded Yale University Press with his wife Wilhelmine in 1908. The competition's first judge, Charlton Miner Lewis, was a prominent professor in Yale's English department. The inaugural competition took place after the end of World War I, just as an influx of young veterans returned from fighting in Europe and entered college. Modernist poetry emerged in this period, but early entries in the series reflected the neoclassical tastes of the older generation adjudicating the competition, all men who had received degrees from Yale in the late-19th century. The anglophilic publishers were heavily influenced by English poetry, especially the contemporary Georgian poetry, and the competition itself was directly influenced by the similar "Adventures All" poetry series of Oxford University Press.

The contest solidified its importance in American literature under the judgeship of Stephen Vincent Benét. Benet was judge from 1933 to 1942, followed by Archibald MacLeish from 1944 to 1946. Margaret Walker's For My People was the last volume selected by Benet. Auden assumed the judgeship after MacLeish.

The contest is regarded by some to have been at its height from 1947 to 1959, when W. H. Auden was its judge. His then-young poets included Adrienne Rich, James Wright, W. S. Merwin, John Ashbery, and John Hollander. The period was also notable for the two-time refusal of Sylvia Plath's manuscript Two Lovers, and Colossus, which was subsequently published in England.

Between 1969 and 1977, overseen by Stanley Kunitz, included volumes by Carolyn Forché and Robert Hass; Hass later became the Poet Laureate of the United States.

21st century

The judgeship of W. S. Merwin, from 1998 to 2003, was fraught with controversy, as he refused to select a winner the first year that he was judge. Louise Glück, who is widely considered to have revived the prize's stature, judged the award from 2003 to 2010. Rae Armantrout is the current judge.

Past winners

The year column provides the date of the competition. The winning poetry collections are published the following year.

Year ! Poet ! Title Judge ! class="unsortable"
1918 1
2 Forgotten Shrines
1919 3 Four Gardens
4 Spires and Poplars
5
6 Where Lilith Dances
1920 7 Wild Geese
8 Horizons
9 Wampum and Old Gold
10 Golden Darkness
1921 11 White April
12 Dreams and a Sword
13 Hidden Waters
14 Attitudes
1922 15
16 Battle-Retrospect
17 Silver Wands
18 Mosaics
1923 19 Up and Down
1924 20 Coach into Pumpkin
1925 21 Quest
22 High Passage
1926 23 Dark Pavilion
1927 24 Twist o' Smoke
25
26 This Unchanging Mask
1928 27 Hemlock Wall
28 Half-Light and Overture
1929 29 Virtuosa
1930 30 Dark Certainty
1931 31 Worn Earth
1932 32
1933 33 Permit Me Voyage
1934 34 Theory of Flight
1935 35
1936 36
1937 37 Letter to a Comrade
1938 38
1939 39 Return Again, Traveler
1940 40
1941 41 For My People
1942
1943 42 Love Letters from an Impossible Land
1944 43 Cut Is the Branch
1945 44 Family Circle
1946 45 Poems
1947 46
1948 47
1949
1950 48
1951 49
1952 50 Various Jangling Keys
1953 51
1954
1955 52 Some Trees
1956 53
1957 54
1958 55 Of the Festivity
1959 56 Bone Thoughts
1960 57 Poems
1961 58 Views of Jeopardy
1962 59 Manhattan Pastures
1963 60 The Breaking of the Day
1964 61 Dream Barker
1965
1966 62
1967 63 Coming Close and Other Poems
1968 64 Uranium Poems
1969 65 Collecting Evidence
1970 66 Lugging Vegetables to Nantucket
1971 67 Obscenities
1972 68 Field Guide
1973 69 Threats Instead of Trees
1974 70 Snow on Snow
1975 71 Gathering the Tribes
1976 72 Beginning with O
1977 73
1978 74 Natural Histories
1979 75 One Way to Reconstruct the Scene
1980 76 Green Soldiers
1981 77 Icehouse Lights
1982 78 Picture Bride
1983 79
1984 80 Navigable Waterways
1985 81 Terms to Be Met
1986 82 Above the Land
1987 83 To the Place of Trumpets
1988 84 Out of the Woods
1989 85 Hermit with Landscape
1990 86 Bears Dancing in the Northern Air
1991 87 Hands of the Saddlemaker
1992 88 Stone Crop
1993 89 Thinking the World Visible
1994 90 Living in the Resurrection
1995 91 Cities of Memory
1996 92 My Shining Archipelago
1997
1998 93 Shells
1999 94 Ultima Thule
2000 95 Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions
2001 96 Discography
2002 97 Famous Americans
2003 98
2004 99 Crush
2005 100 Green Squall
2006 101 Frail-Craft
2007 102
2008 103 It Is Daylight
2009 104 Juvenilia
2010 105 Radial Symmetry
2011 106 Slow Lightning
2012 107 Westerly
2013 108 Eruv
2014 109 Blue Yodel
2015 110
2016 111 simulacra
2017 112 We Play a Game
2018 113
2019 114
2020115Desiree C. BaileyWhat Noise Against The Cane[2]
2021116Robert Wood LynnMothman Apologia
2022117Mary-Alice DanielMass for Shut-Ins
2023118Cindy Juyoung OkWard Toward

See also

References

Sources

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Yale Series of Younger Poets Rules . 2022-12-28 . 2022-12-28 . https://web.archive.org/web/20221228215450/https://yalebooks.yale.edu/yale-series-of-younger-poets-rules/ . live .
  2. Web site: Yale Series of Younger Poets Winners . Yale University Press . 24 June 2023 . . 24 June 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20230624211333/https://yalebooks.yale.edu/yale-series-of-younger-poets-winners/ . live .

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Yale Series of Younger Poets".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.