The Aurorean Chooses "Beach Glass" as Best Poem

The Aurorean chose my poem Beach Glass as "best poem" from its Spring/Summer 2009 edition.

An esteemed New England poetry journal published continuously since 1995, The Aurorean has been feature-profiled in Poet's Market, and three times named a "PIC" by the prestigious Small Press Review.

The award includes a generous check (for poetry journals), an announcement in The Aurorean's Fall/Winter issue, and publication on the journal's web site for the next year
(http://www.encirclepub.com/poetry/aurorean).

The Aurorean's anonymous judge's comments about Beach Glass are these:

"Beach Glass" is a well-thought-out poem—imaginative in its turns of phrase ("as if we were something's great hobby") and in its imagery ("a bit of bobeche from a grand chandelier").

It moves, like the waves [it] speaks of; it narrates—brings the reader in immediately with "we"; and makes sweeping statements ("...the tumbling will give us a texture/that transcends the standards/by which we are judged..."), but carries it all off successfully because of its precision. I am inspired by this poem—I feel better for having read it—without feeling as if I have been preached to.

And a re-post of Beach Glass:


Beach Glass
(for Anne Cowles Pinkney)


We could be the neck of a milk bottle
or a bit of bobeche from a grand chandelier.

It doesn’t matter what we were a part of
before we were broken, only that we were

broken and a part of something
and that our young edges were sharply fragile
and our translucence too common.

We know of waves, and still, now and then
feel them vacuum the sand from beneath our feet
and pull us out and over and back, across the sand
as if we were something’s great hobby
tumbling in finer and finer and finer grit.

And it is the tumbling that matters
so much more than the approval
of combers or children, for if we have time
the tumbling will give us a texture
that transcends the standards
by which we are judged.

We remember so little
of how the tumbling smoothed us
only that, in the end, we are smooth.