Judge’s Comments

In Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet’s poems, motherhood is a transformative and even at times frightening event, one that redefines the self and one that threatens to subsume it. Her lines, ranging from long and loping to brief, almost frantic reports, mimetically capture the infatuation and the exhaustion the mother in these poems feels for her child, and most poignantly, the difficulties of remaining a writer in those circumstances. The strain of balancing parental responsibilities, responsibilities to the self, and a commitment to art is not tidily resolved in these poems, but instead plays out as a negotiation, a capitulation, a resistance. Stonestreet’s language reflects these concerns, at times juxtaposing the high diction of lines like, “fogged the evil eye with its emerald swoon” with the prosaic, “please God, just ten minutes to pee,” to both humorous and moving effect. These are the poems of the best kind of poet – one who can convey ambivalence in no ambivalent terms.