We’re still more than a week away from Valentine’s Day, but I have an early gift for my husband: two different love poems that have received recognition lately.
First of all, “Mouth: To Say,” from Full Cry, will be featured on Poetry Daily on Saturday, Feb. 8. Two other poems from my first book have been chosen by the site in the past few years, and I’m eternally grateful to Diane Boller and Don Selby for their support.
“Mouth: To Say” first appeared in New South, which nominated it for a Pushcart Prize, and it was also translated into Spanish for a bilingual reading series by Manuel Iris, who noted that the sounds of words didn’t quite work in the same way in the Spanish. Amor doesn’t really start with “tongue against teeth and end on lips” the way the word love does.
In addition, a revised version of the poem I read my husband at our wedding, now called “Vows,” is part of a set of three poems awarded a prize by the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Foundation. This amazing fund has been supporting young poets with large awards for the past decade, and while it will be partnering with the Poetry Foundation from now on, they will continue to support the work of hardworking poets in their early careers. I’m honored to be a prizewinner for a second year. You can see this year’s poems on the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg website under “2013 Prizewinners.” (My previous win is listed under “2010 Prizewinners.”)
One more note: the final image of another poem from this year’s prize, “Felicity, OH,” was inspired by a Facebook photo of the daughter of friends of mine. Also named Felicity, she preferred to wear her swimsuit to Trader Joe’s one day…
Lisa Ampleman 
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