Forms of Gone: Poems

"The poetry of Yerra Sugarman functions something like a solar system--around a sun that is Beauty and constant, there moves a planet Clarity of Utterance, there are the planets History and Holocaust, and the twin planets Passion and Eye whose gravitational pulls keep it all in motion, then there is Music (a voice distantly related to a cello), and the planet Language (that like our Venus is the brightest of all), finally there is Decency, which is made of iron and has its own star. This extraordinary display in the literary heavens comes in a first book." --Stanley Moss

The PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry recognizes the high literary character of the published work to date of a new and emerging American poet of any age and the promise of further literary achievement. The PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry was created through a grant from the Kaplen Foundation.

2005 Judges: Linda Bierds, Carol Muske-Dukes, and Grace Schulman