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Community Corner

Poetry With a Purpose

The 4th annual James J. Nicholson Political Poetry prizes were awarded Wednesday night in an evening of readings and reminiscences.

Some stories and snatches of poetry from Wednesday night’s ceremony to award this year’s James J. Nicholson political poetry prizes, held at the Pelham Public Library:

--The winner in the adult category was Gerard Becker, a retired high-school chemistry teacher who contrasted a familiar phrase from the Iraq war with the devastation caused by the war.

Becker, who lives in Yonkers and taught in the Bronx, recited his lengthy prize-winning poem, “Mission Accomplished,” from memory, ending with the lines:

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For that dream deferred, I cry,

For the new Mesopotamia cowering in the Green Zone, I cry.

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I watch the glimmer of light die.

--Sherman K. Poultney, who judged the adult category this year, praised “Mission Accomplished” for its “emotion sustained by concrete images.” Poultney, a poet, playwright and short-story writer who lives in Wilton, Conn., noted that British poet A. E. Housman believed that emotion was the component that turned verse into poetry.

The long lines and parallel construction of Becker’s poem were reminiscent of Walt Whitman, he added.

“I’m a passionate hobbyist,” said Becker, who called the Nicholson competition rare for having a political focus. “I write a lot of nature poetry, but I love political poetry.”

--Before awarding the prize, Poultney read four of his own political poems, all dealing with war and its effect on surviving combatants.

From “The War Statue,” about a weathered statue that was made of wood, following the custom of the ancient Greeks, to memorialize a town’s Civil War dead:

At seventy, I visit the statue alone.

Crows caucus loudly in the surrounding evergreens

and a cold winter rain drenches us.

I can no longer discern

the uniform and cap.

--In the student categories, Rahil Dedhia won the high-school prize, with Sarah Rubock, last year’s high-school winner, receiving an honorable mention for her poem “Malika, Transplanted.”

Dedhia, a junior, used the language of social media to criticize the caustic tone of contemporary political debate in “Disagree to Agree”:

In this climate

Of global warming

Why not warm up

To each other

--The middle-school winner was Una Corbett. John (Jack) Roche received an honorable mention for “The Egyptian Crisis.” Corbett, a seventh-grader, dealt with the environmental consequences of a bottle cast into the ocean in “Message in a Bottle”:

 The bottle marred the tranquil scene

No longer is the sea pristine.

--At the beginning of the evening, Peggy Nicholson spoke about her husband, in whose honor she and her family established the prize, which is in its fourth year. She said a prize for political poetry seemed an appropriate way to remember Nicholson, who helped establish the library and served on its board of trustees for the library’s first 10 years.

“Jim had three great loves,” she told the audience. “People, politics and poetry.”

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