On February 19, 1949 Ezra Pound received the first Bollingen Prize for Poetry, a literary honor bestowed on an American poet in recognition of the best book of new verse within the last two years or for lifetime achievement. His award was very controversial. Not only had he been been arrested for treason, but was considered unfit for trial and committed to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. at the time of the award. (Corrigan, 1967.) The award was given for Pound for his Pisan Cantos. You can read them here.
The Bollingen Prize is awarded every two years by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University.
The 2023 Prize was awarded to Joy Harjo for her book Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years and for her lifetime achievement in and contributions to American poetry. (Yale Library, 2023)
At dawn the panther of the heavens peers over the edge of the world.
She hears the stars gossip with the sun, sees the moon washing her lean
darkness with water electrified by prayers. All over the world there are those
who can’t sleep, those who never awaken.
My granddaughter sleeps on the breast of her mother with milk on
her mouth. A fly contemplates the sweetness of lactose.
Her father is wrapped in the blanket of nightmares. For safety he
approaches the red hills near Thoreau. They recognize him and sing for
him.
Her mother has business in the house of chaos. She is a prophet dis-
guised as a young mother who is looking for a job. She appears at the
door of my dreams and we put the house back together.
Panther watches as human and animal souls are lifted to the heavens by
rain clouds to partake of songs of beautiful thunder.
Others are led by deer and antelope in the wistful hours to the vil-
lages of their ancestors. There they eat cornmeal cooked with berries
that stain their lips with purple while the tree of life flickers in the sun.
It’s October, though the season before dawn is always winter. On the
city streets of this desert town lit by chemical yellow travelers
search for home.
Some have been drinking and intimate with strangers. Others are
escapees from the night shift, sip lukewarm coffee, shift gears to the
other side of darkness.
One woman stops at a red light, turns over a worn tape to the last
chorus of a whispery blues. She has decided to live another day.
The stars take notice, as do the half-asleep flowers, prickly pear and
chinaberry tree who drink exhaust into their roots, into the earth.
She guns the light to home where her children are asleep and may
never know she ever left. That their fate took a turn in the land of
nightmares toward the sun may be untouchable knowledge.
It is a sweet sound.
The panther relative yawns and puts her head between her paws.
She dreams of the house of panthers and the seven steps to grace.
Insomnia and Seven Steps to Grace by Joy Harjo
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365 Holidays a Year 