First place, Poetry: 'Spring Flowers'

Judge's comment: I love ekphrastic poetry - that is, poems written about a work of art - and this poem is an example of why. We don't even need to have seen the painting that the poem describes; lush words and phrases like languor, flower-figured, and crumbs of pastel hint at the style and richness of the art. The poet doesn't merely describe the painting, but shares the timeless feeling that the art evokes. The reader reading the poem identifies with the poet gazing at art, as we realize that the poem is about art itself, more than just one painting.

Spring Flowers

(Peonies Wm. Merritt Chase, Terra Foundation collection)

A common yet ritual moment captured.

Japonisme artifice of course - the kimono wraps a counterfeit geisha,

the sister of the artist's wife.

With exquisite languor, drooped arm with still fan,

red-orange flower-figured kimono

reflected in the brass vase,

the woman's slender neck bends to a peony's fragrance.

Beauty bows to beauty.

Yet we know all beauty bows to time.

Kimono, flowers, vase, fan and woman

now are shredded threads, compost, scrap or dust.

It has begun within the image: peony petals faded and fallen upon the soft green cloth.

This fragile work itself will bow.

The paper weakens, wrinkles, fades in light, flakes and sheds its colors.

Crumbs of pastel, shaken by footsteps, jarred by movement, fall behind the glass.

The artist, his vision and the work itself will vanish as have the peonies.