Yay for Tony Hoagland!

Risk-taking poet awarded $50,000 Jackson Prize by NYC-based group
Posted by The Associated Press on Friday

A poetry professor at the University of Houston has been chosen as the second annual winner of the Jackson Poetry Prize, an award for writers of great talent, but less fame.

Tony Hoagland's win was announced Thursday by Poets & Writers Inc., a New York City-based nonprofit group for creative writers.

The three-judge panel that awarded Hoagland the $50,000 prize called him a risk-taker.

'He risks wild laughter in poems that are totally heartfelt, poems you want to read out loud to anyone who needs to know the score and even more so to those who think they know the score,' wrote the judges, who included the poets Philip Levine, Robert Pinsky and Ellen Bryant Voigt.