Tuesday, June 19, 2018

The 2017 Walt Whitman Award: “Eye Level” by Jenny Xie


The Walt Whitman Award is given by the Academy of American Poets for a first published poetry collection. The winner is not selected by a panel of judges but instead by a single judge named by the academy. For 2017, poet Juan Felipe Herrera, U.S. poet laureate from 2015 to 2017, served as the judge. And his selection was Eye Level by Jenny Xie.

It’s easy to see why. Just read her poems.

Xie was born in Hefei, China, and grew up in New Jersey. Now a teacher at New York University (NYU), she received degrees from Princeton University and NYU. She’s also received fellowships from several organizations, and her poems have been printed in American Poetry ReviewPoetryNew RepublicTin House, and other literary publications. Xie had previously published a chapbook, Nowhere to Arrive, which received the 2016 Drinking Gourd Chapbook Prize.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

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