Presented to: Philip White
For: "Island Spring"
Discussing the award for poetry, the judges stated, "When one is confronted with selecting the best poetry among an impressive collection, inevitably one poem or set of poems will surface, demanding the judge to take notice, so that essentially the poems do the choosing rather than the judge. At least, that is what I like to think happened when Philip White's poems "Island Spring" and "The Perseids" emerged as the winners of the 1992 Association of Mormon Letters poetry award. More than simply impressions, White's poems are informed with ideas. This thought, combined with deft imagery, careful line breaks, and subtle lyricism, give us poetry that fuses craftsmanship with emotion and intellect in the appropriate proportions.
"White's language is not haphazard or arbitrary, but forms a synthesis of sound and metaphor. In each poem a sense of unity is created by these overlapping images. For example, in "Island Spring," several images are woven together to convey the vulnerability of the child as her dark, rustling world seems to almost overwhelm her tenuous existence:
A child, she steps below such slashing, eyes bright with fear flashing. . . . where the moon's tatters lie strewn across thick, bladed shadow. . . . Always I will see her so, meager of body and singing in the knife-ridden dark . .&bnsp;.
"Island Spring" is exotic and mysterious, yet in some ways "The Perseids" is even more complex and mysterious, despite the familiar undertone of death. The poem is poignant in its quiet grief and austerity. Many poems on death use the contrast between light and dark. The light referred to in the poem's title is intriguing--a meteor shower, a cluster of lights that are individually extinguished. This image is mirrored with a later one: 'You were always steady, dying / the way you did, cell / by cell.'
"Both poems reveal a poet who listens and observes carefully. These qualities do not pertain merely to his own experience but to the writing of poetry as well. The poems convey an implicit craftsmanship; one appreciates how effortlessly the poems appear to have been created (although one knows otherwise). This alone is a quality any poet hopes to achieve."