Morgenthau Prize
Poems from Henry Morgenthau III and past Morgenthau Prize winners Dennis Lee, Mark Elber, and Winifred Hughes.
TRANSCRIPT
One of literature’s most prestigious awards is the Henry Morgenthau III Poetry Prize which Passager awards for a first book of poetry by a writer age 70 or older. The prize was established in 2018 by the Morgenthau children to honor their father Henry Morgenthau III. He began writing poetry in his 90s. The prize includes publication and a $2,000 award. The submission deadline for the next Morgenthau Prize is January 15, 2026, and the judge is internationally respected poet Alicia Ostriker. You can find the submission details on Passager’s website. On this episode of Burning Bright, pieces by previous Morgenthau Prize winners.
American University professor and poet David Keplinger judged the first Morgenthau competition. He was one of Henry Morgenthau’s poetry teachers and said that winner Dennis Lee’s book Tidal Wave “carries off what Charles Simic called ‘the quality of growing up and growing older, as if these two worlds existed simultaneously on parallel planes.’” David said, “I admire the intelligence and honesty of these poems and the sense of a life constantly at the threshold of a change of heart. Here from Dennis Lee’s Morgenthau Prize-winning book Tidal Wave, “Coney Island—July 4, 1952.”
Uncle Nathan rubs back the hair
over blue numbers,
chants Hebrew psalms,
then slips away to a heavy wooden chair
planted to face the fence
where my father watches a ballgame
through slats that will never be fixed.
On its way to taunt Uncle Nathan,
Grandma’s beef smoke
oils the undersides of leaves on her favorite maple.
My father sprawls out, holds a sun reflector,
feet dug into sand
down to where it’s cool,
Grandma’s maple, parchment-dry.
Chicken fat soaks into brown paper bags
three floors up on the clean white kitchen windowsill.
I sit on the fire escape with kosher chicken and comics.
Grandma speaks Yiddish into the soup.
Tonight’s sky will be brighter than the Ferris wheel.
“Coney Island—July 4, 1952,” Morgenthau Prize winner Dennis Lee.
David Keplinger also judged the 2022 Morgenthau competition. He said that although winner Mark Elber’s book title Headstone suggests a world already past and fixed behind us in memory, it’s an illustration of the aliveness of the past as it courses in us, and we are its walking talking monument. Here’s Mark Elber’s poem “My Father’s Hands.”
My Father’s Hands
held the blue globe, displaying the distance between our births
the slow trek of continents, the vast wet and dizzying spin
my mother singing to herself at the sink
his hands gripped the steering wheel
white walls and wide turns
the fat-assed fins of late 50’s Detroit
the AM channel’s chatter, songs squeezed between commercials
his foil-lined ashtray buried in the mentholated butts of Kools
subways rattling overhead
a collision of cultures between the front seat and back
the schoolyard banter native to New York
and an accent importing a world half an atlas away
refusing reparations for his snuffed-out generations
my father’s hands split the unruly Atlantic
gently stroked my cheek
From his Morgenthau Prize-winning book Headstone, Mark Elber’s poem “My Father’s Hands.”
Former Maryland Poet Laureate Grace Cavalieri selected The Village of New Ghosts by Winifred Hughes as the 2024 Morgenthau Prize winner. Grace said, “Where this book exceeds and excels is in creating a hologram of emotions, a reality we can enter, where aesthetics are crisp and clear enough to create a new paradigm. Poetics that bring emotional worlds into existence have to be held in place with mastery. Clearly, the author is in control of its precise syntax and beautiful heart.” Here’s Winifred Hughes’s poem “Distances.”
How many light years is it
to where the light still shines
from the windows of your father’s house,
the bulb of the goose-necked lamp
stretched out over his papers
as he scrawls away darkness
till three in the morning,
the fluorescent coil in the kitchen
radiant over your mother’s bent head,
her chapped hands still scrubbing the dishes,
the nightlight under the doorframe
as you sleep with your brothers and sister,
dreaming, unknowing?
From her Morgenthau Prize-winning book The Village of New Ghosts, “Distances” by Winifred Hughes.
Since we’ve been reading work by people who won the Henry Morgenthau III Poetry contest, let’s listen to a piece by Henry himself. 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner Peter Balakian said, “Morgenthau’s poems are crisp, elegant forays into memory both personal and cultural, as he engages with an ironic Lowellian eye, a rich cultural history of growing up in affluent Manhattan during the 1920s and 30s.” Henry Morgenthau III’s poem “Legacy.”
In a sturdy mahogany cabinet
on display behind locked glass doors,
I secure Grandma’s fragile Limoges china
and sparkling Waterford cut crystal.
Mother’s jewelry, Grandpa’s solid gold pocket watch
and a set of monogrammed flat silver for eighteen,
are stored inconveniently in a bank vault.
Collected works of art, insured at two percent a year,
will be repurchased twice in half a century.
And so, too constipated to gain relief
with gifts to patiently waiting heirs,
I struggle to survive, possessed by my possessions.
Henry Morgenthau III’s poem “Legacy.” And we’ll end with this quickie, also by Henry. “Late.”
At ninety-eight,
I hate being late.
Too late to date
Too late to mate
Too late to die?
They will recall
that day in the fall
that old so-and-so
found time to go.
We’ve been listening to pieces by past winners of the Henry Morgenthau III Poetry Prize for a first book of poetry by a writer age 70 or older. The submission deadline for the next Morgenthau Prize is January 15, 2026.
To buy Dennis Lee’s book Tidal Wave, Mark Elber’s book Headstone, Winifred Hughes’s book The Village of New Ghosts, and Henry Morgenthau III’s book A Sunday in Purgatory, to get more information about the 2016 Morgenthau Prize, to subscribe to, donate to, or learn more about Passager and its commitment to older writers, visit passagerbooks.com.
Passager is currently offering a holiday sale! Use code “HOLIDAY30” at checkout for 30% off your order.
For Christine, Rosanne, Mary, Asher, and the rest of the Passager staff, I’m Jon Shorr.
Due to the limitations of online publishing, poems may not appear in their original formatting.
