Early in Proof of Life, in a poem called “What’s at Stake,” Kathy O’Fallon remarks, “Don’t we live on the same playground?” It’s true. Soon after, I savor the phrasing of “Land ahead, warns the lighthouse:/solid ground and graveyard,” a father depicted by “the slingshot of his tempers,” a remembered childhood scene containing “the pond and swans that look like churchyards,/frogs like gods.” Then comes the woman’s voice: “Everything’s the tango of love/hate if you live long enough.” At home there are piquant family portraits, love for music, dogs, horses, where “the nicker of a horse in the next field calls my name,” an unforgettable small granddaughter describing her “superpowers,” and the question, “How long till the well stops giving?” Philosophical, conversational, sharply observant, Proof of Life surges through a lifetime of energy, experience, and wisdom—everywhere a pleasure to read.

Alicia Ostriker
Poet, critic, and activist and two-time finalist for the National Book Award

Kathy O’Fallon, the first born of nine, was raised in the postage-stamp community of Levittown, Long Island, and in a bedroom community in northern New Jersey. An early memory is wondering about the poem framed on her mother’s dresser, “How Do I Love Thee?” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, It made her very curious and a little bit frightened. To whom was she referring?

A self-described part observer, part detective, O’Fallon never expected to become a psychologist, but a prior career in a law office/library left her lonely for human connection. Meanwhile, she began writing fiction. Grad school, work, divorce and two toddlers kept her busy with real life too. A writer’s conference lured her into poetry after her mother’s death—she credits her mom with the nudge—and she put prose behind her.

O’Fallon has published several chapbooks—At Higher Elevations, Underbelly, When the Moon Spills Her Milk, and Variations on a Theme of Love. Her poem, “Last Request Lest I Forget: No Cemetery,” was nominated for Best of the Net Anthology, and “Listening for Tchaikovsky” received honorable mention in Passager’s 2024 Poetry Contest. Her full-length manuscript by the same name was a finalist for the Henry Morgenthau III First Book Poetry Prize in 2024.

O’Fallon is a pen name that Kathy finally legalized after trying on several others, to protect the not-so-innocent.

RUNNER UP

Ruth Hoberman from Newtonville, MA: Self-Portrait, Standing

Ruth Hoberman’s Self-Portrait, Standing, is a cool and witty book, lit with surprises. It draws jaunty portraits of her younger self and her husband, a daughter’s tattoo, a long-dead mother as “ramshackle ghost,” alongside meditations on aging, art, street scenes, gardens, life “worth living through.” Then there is time present, the news, and the world’s cruelty. In wartime the poet refuses to choose sides: “I stand with the dead—all the dead—/their rubble and their thirst.” When her husband questions why she is depressed, she offers an alphabet poem: “A for arrest, B for balaclava/ and so on . . . C for corrupt, D for deport/ and so on . . .” for she is learning to “juggle appetite with grief.” Here are poems not only for the aged but for any adult mind. I will enjoy reading Self-Portrait, Standing again and again.

Alicia Ostriker
Poet, critic, and activist and two-time finalist for the National Book Award

Finalists

Richard Brostoff from Belmont, MA: The Axis of a Vortex
Miriam Flock from Palo Alto, CA: The Happy Ending Problem
Tina Parke-Sutherland from Brattleboro, VT: The Dream Latitudes

Honorable Mentions

Linda Angelo from Lexington, KY: Our Breath Comes in Turns
John Beck from Okemos, MI: Lucky House
Linda Bryant from Berea, KY: My Life as a Cricket
Kate Chappell from Lyman, ME: Sanctuary of Another Shore
Richard Dixon from Weirton, WV: TRAILINGS, Poems from an Old Walking Man
D.M. Dutcher from Highland Park, NJ: Painting Pictures
Patricia Farewell from Westmoreland, NH: It’s That Simple
Leslie Gabel-Brett from West Hartford, CT: A Flower Like That – Poems New and Old
Neil Grill from New York, NY: Old and Full of Days
Jan Grossman from New York, NY: Rethinking Eden
Janet Harrison from Harpers Ferry, WV: The Door Is Also Open
John Hicks from Placitas, NM: Sometimes I Am the River
Kelvin Keraga from Greenwich, NY: The Moon Relents
Lisa Low from Oxford, CT: Rapscallion
Donna Mendelson from Missoula, MT: Just Now
Jani Mordenski from Farmington Hills, MI: Matters of the Earth and Sea
Linda Myers from Port Angeles, WA: Old Growth
Steve Rempe from Novato, CA: In the Telling
David Riley from Providence, RI: The Sea That Holds Us
Allen Shadow from Catskill, NY: The Beautiful Winding
Saudamini Siegrist from New York, NY: Full Disclosure
Thrower Starr from Atlanta, GA: These Bones on Loan

From the editors: Thank you to everyone who sent us their excellent manuscripts for this prize. A special thank you to renowned poet Alicia Ostriker for the care and astuteness she brought to her duties as contest judge, celebrating the “poetic pizzazz” of all the manuscripts she read. Henry Morgenthau III, who published his first book of poems at age 99, would be overjoyed to see ‘newer’ older poets receiving national recognition for their artistic achievements. 

The Henry Morgenthau III First Book Poetry Prize is awarded biennially to a poet 70 or older. Read more about Henry Morgenthau III and his legacy here.