Peter Balakian: Winner 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry

What do you mean you’ve never heard of Peter Balakian, the poet who just won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for poetry? Read a few of his poems here.

Peter Balakian is an Armenian American poet, writer and academic, the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of Humanities at Colgate University. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2016.

Balakian is the author of five books of poems. His poems have appeared widely in American magazines and journals such as The Nation, The New Republic, Antaeus, Partisan Review, Poetry, AGNI, and The Kenyon Review; and in anthologies such as New Directions in Prose and Poetry, The Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets, Poetry’s 75th Anniversary Issue (1987), The Wadsworth Anthology of Poetry and others.

 

Physicians (Agni)

 

Above school kids in Episcopal jackets

cherubs are singing

to the beautiful fake lapis

of St. John the Divine

 

and from this side chapel

I see through the blue

to the 6th floor of St. Luke’s

where my father’s heart caved in.

 

Domestic Lament (Poetry)

 

Like heavy muslin

there is air around my house.

A goblet half-full

of vinegar on my desk.

 

Tangerines are spoiled globes

in a bowl.

 

Home (Ploughshares)

 

When you’re in the mountains

you feel the desert air.

Waking to fog on a salt marsh

you taste the empty boulevards of July.

 

Source:  http://daily.jstor.org