Annal:1998 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 1998. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- 1998 LATimes–Poetry winner
- 1999 Pulitzer–Poetry finalist
- Score: 16.48
Alice Notley vividly reconstructs the mysteries, longings, and emotions of her past in this brilliant new collection of poems that charts her growth from young girl to young woman to accomplished artist.
In this volume, memories of her childhood in the California desert spring to life through evocative renderings of the American landscape, circa 1950. Likewise, her coming of age as a poet in the turbulent sixties is evoked through the era’s angry, creative energy. As she looks backward with the perspective that time and age allows, Notley ably captures the…
Without: Poems
- 1998 LATimes–Poetry finalist
- Score: 6.48
You might expect the fact of dying—the dying of a beloved wife and fellow poet—to make for a bleak and lonely tale. But Donald Hall’s poignant and courageous poetry, facing that dread fact, involves us all: the magnificent, humorous, and gifted woman, Jane Kenyon, who suffered and died; the doctors and nurses who tried but failed to save her; the neighbors, friends, and relatives who grieved for her; the husband who sat by her while she lived and afterward sat in their house alone with his pain, self-pity, and fury; and those of us who till now had nothing to do…
The Shape of the Journey: New and Collected Poems
- 1998 LATimes–Poetry finalist
- Score: 6.48
From visionary lyrics and meditative suites to poems inspired by Russian suicides and scandalous Zen monks, Jim Harrison amply demonstrates why Booklist named The Shape of the Journey a “Top Ten Book of the Year.” He is clearly one of our masters.
The Folding Cliffs: A Narrative
- 1998 LATimes–Poetry finalist
- Score: 6.48
From a major American poet—a thrilling story, in verse, of nineteenth-century Hawaii. The story of an attempt by the government to seize and constrain possible victims of leprosy and the determination of one small family not to be taken. A tale of the perils and glories of their flight into the wilds of the island of Kauai, pursued by a gunboat full of soldiers.
A brilliant capturing—inspired by the poet’s respect for the people of these islands—of their life, their history, the gods and goddesses of their mythic past. A somber revelation of the wrecking of…
American Rush: Selected Poems
- 1998 LATimes–Poetry finalist
- Score: 6.48
This is an essential book for anyone concerned with the current progress of American poetry.
