Prize-winning poetry explores life's lessons

Posted 03/03/02

Cynthia Huntington, Professor of English and Chair of the Creative Writing Program, recently received the Four Way Books 2001 Levis Prize for The Radiant, her fourth book and third collection of poetry, which will be published in February 2003. The national award includes publication of the book, a $1,500 honorarium, and the invitation to participate in a number of readings in New York and New England in the spring.

Both of Huntington's earlier books of poetry were published through similar prizes, and Huntington said that she was "very, very happy" to be chosen for the Levis prize. Four Way Books is a New York press dedicated almost exclusively to poetry. In the small world of poetry, it is so difficult to be recognized that, for many poets, these prizes are the only hope for publication.

"Everybody you know who has finished a book in the last year is sending their manuscripts off to the same 10 contests. There are so few outlets for poetry," Huntington said, "it takes a leap of confidence to write a book of poems and submit it." The Levis Prize was judged by a well-known poet, Susan Mitchell. More than 1,000 poets entered complete manuscripts to the contest, which is held every two years and awards a single prize.

The Radiant consists of a collection of poems from the past five years, which Huntington has unified through the themes of marital trauma and illness, the latter of which is related to Huntington's experiences in dealing with the effects of multiple sclerosis, which she has had for 15 years.

"Only in the last five years have I been writing about it, and it's been in a kind of speculative way, trying to figure out this mind/body split, the way that one is affected by illness, and the way illness affects one's ability to see the world clearly," Huntington said.

In addition to the trauma of a debilitating illness that makes one lose faith in one's body, the book addresses the trauma of a marriage in a time of separation and reconciliation. Huntington expresses the impact of a series of life crises: "When you lose what you think makes you who you are, you're still something. Part of this book asks, so what are you, when you've lost everything you think defined you? And what is it to define yourself in the first place?"

Huntington chose The Radiant for the title, the astronomical term for the location in the sky where meteor showers appear to originate. "A meteor consists of pieces of an exploded star or planet that are very brightly lit. And many of these lights in the sky — these bright places, these illuminations — often originate from some kind of trauma, some kind of collision."

To finalize the manuscript of The Radiant, Huntington will go to The MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, N.H., in March, where she has been chosen for a two-week fellowship. MacDowell, the oldest and largest artist colony in the United States, provides secluded studios for individuals involved in varieties of creative work — artists, writers, musicians, and others. While offering the opportunity and freedom to work, it also offers a social space for the talented creative people who congregate there.

Huntington moves on in her current writing, but as a summary of the state of mind of her last book, she cites the last stanza of the poem "The Attic," which will appear in The Radiant:

And still I seem to remain, somehow, myself,
To remain at least something, at a loss
To know how much can be taken from me
And leave me only changed, not ruined,
Alert in an emptiness so alive,
I recognize it as my life. What would be left,
The shape of it, then, this life? I said some beauty,
Or radiance, an endless space I fall into,
Or am taken up by, a brightness that holds me,
Gathers life in the center of empty space,
Like the vision of a life I have not lived.

- Kate Siber '02