North American Review presents the winners of the 2019 Annual James Hearst Poetry Prize. We would like to thank the 312 poets who submitted 1,237 poems to this contest and congratulate this year's winners.
First Place
“Bread” – Alan Elyshevitz
Runner-Up
“The high school's one bassoonist” – Alex Chertok
Honorable Mentions
“After Failure” – Patricia Clark
“Love Me Love Me LoveMeLoveMeLove” – Shelley Stoehr
Finalists
“Orpheus, Again” – Rachel Abramowitz
“Caught” – Sarah Anderson
“Underpainting” – Jayne Bejulian
“Reading Antigone in late summer with monarch caterpillars” – Charity Gingerich
“Mary O. Davis” – A. Kaiser
“Hysterectomy” – Elizabeth Knapp
“Koko the Gorilla is Dead” – Elizabeth Knapp
“Threnody with a White Ford Bronco inside It” – Elizabeth Knapp
“Slowdown” – Greg Rappleye
“Eulogy, Scottsbluff” – Todd Smith
“Found Objects” – Sarah Sousa
“Revelation” – Donna Spector
“Bone Wishing” – Tara Flint Taylor
“Ordinary Things” – Tara Flint Taylor
About the Judge
Dana Levin is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Banana Palace (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), a finalist for the Rilke Prize. A grateful recipient of honors from the NEA and the Library of Congress, as well as the Rona Jaffe, Whiting, and Guggenheim Foundations, she serves as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Maryville University in Saint Louis.