The American Poetry Review /Honickman First Book Prize in Poetry

2004 Winner

Kevin Ducey
for Rhinoceros

Selected by
Yusef Komunyakaa

Rhinoceros was chosen by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa. In this collection, Ducey riffs on history, mythology, desire, death, sex and even food. These are poetic investigations of the human impulses of comedy and tragedy.

"Like the tight rope walker over Niagara Falls who pauses halfway to light his stove and scramble an egg, Ducey lyrics his satiric way through history, juxtaposing revered heroic myths against our present Empire. It's the Colosseum all over again, Fellow Americans - gladiators, Christians, lions - with signature updates. Read and be amazed at these poems in which 'the Vandals beyond the Rhine' include 'seniors/ unable to afford/ prescription drugs.' I salute Kevin Ducey's lyric gift, his facility with tone, inflection, color, cadence, his deftly parodic voice - and his heart that can say 'I am nothing/ without the light,/ this body'"

--Marilyn Krysl

from "The Lover Speaks of Natural History" from Rhinoceros

When all America has passed
when all the gas stations
have turned to delis
they will speak of my love for you.
And your reality has slowed and I
used to think of death as something
one practiced and the Buddha had
the simple trick of it, but your hand
is in mine, and I kiss your mouth
and it has slowed for me
as well and there is no dying
here in this place inside of a time when
the President is finally dead
and the glaciers are all tenderness.

Kevin Ducey is the winner of the 2004 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize. Ducey's work has appeared in River City, Malahat, Elixir, and Crab Orchard Review, among others. He was the recipient of a Wisconsin Arts Board grant in 2000 and received the MFA from the University of Notre Dame. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

[Order books online] [Book Prize home]