Finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced this week. I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that I’ve only read one of them (Olives, by A.E. Stallings). I notice that all of the books were published relatively early in the year—February, April, May, June (the one outlier is David Ferry, with a pub date of early August). From a statistical perspective, that makes sense: the earlier a book is released, the more time it has to get noticed by reviewers and award panels. (Though I suppose, if you’ve already got a reputation, your book is likely to get noticed right away.) I’m curious to know (but too lazy to find out) whether this phenomenon holds true for earlier years. If so, perhaps poetry publishers would do well to release their books early in the year, or time their releases to take advantage of a lack of competition—much the way the film industry holds certain movies to coincide with the summer blockbuster season or the film festival season. Perhaps some publishers already do so (though I get the sense that poetry presents too small a market to even bother with such considerations). My prediction? Well, Ferry’s book has already received the National Book Award, and considering Ferry’s age, it’s probably the last book he’ll write, so I suspect the auguries are pointing toward him this time around. But my predictions about the future are usually as off-base as my predictions about the past, so don’t bet any money based on my tip.

Also, a quick thumbs-up for the latest issue of Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review. A solid collection all around. Many of the middle poems share a wonderful ebullience, a penchant for echolalia, the is collectively invigorating. I was particularly taken with the work of Hannah Faith Notess, previously unknown to me. Her language and images evoke Richard Hugo, with his keen sense of dispair in dissolution (perhaps not surprising—she apparently lives in Seattle). Consider, for example, these lines from “To the Church Across the Bridge Who is Claiming the City for God”:

I adore the deadpan, epigrammatic line later in this poem: “It hurts to watch the world split down the middle.” Or this line from “To the Body Carried Out of the Apartment Across the Street”: “The crocuses next to the dumpster are opening / their fat purple mouths.” An intense image of Nature at its most uncaring. The cruelty is accentuated by the turn: the line that ends on “opening” is potentially a positive image of renewal, but quickly remakes itself into an image of greed and bloat and selfishness.

And it’s always refreshing to read work by a poet who still holds down a day job. From great adversity springs great art.