2009 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry announced. Great for Copper Canyon to have two of the three finalists. Kudos!

POETRY: "The Shadow of Sirius," by W. S. Merwin.

This is the second Pulitzer for Merwin, whose writing career can be traced to the hymns he wrote as a child and who won in 1971 for "The Carrier of Ladders." The Princeton-educated son of a Presbyterian minister, Merwin has published more than 20 books of poetry and nearly as many works in translation from Latin, Spanish and French.

In 1976 he moved to Hawaii to study with a Zen Buddhist master. Since then, his work has been marked by his passionate commitment to Buddhism and environmentalism. The judges described the book as "a collection of luminous, often tender poems that focus on the profound power of memory."

Finalists
"Also nominated as finalists in this category were: “Watching the Spring Festival,” by Frank Bidart (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), a book of lyric poems that evinces compassion for the human condition as it explores the constraints that limit the possibility of people changing the course of their lives; and “What Love Comes To: New & Selected Poems,” by Ruth Stone (Copper Canyon Press), a collection of poems that give rich drama to ordinary experience, deepening our sense of what it means to be human.