MPF participant David Ferry awarded the Ruth Lilly Prize

By Jacquelyn on May 7, 2011 in Announcement

Many poetry lovers have read David Ferry’s translations of Virgil and Horace as well as the Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh. And many have read his own poetry, for which the Poetry Foundation last month awarded him the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. (See one of his poems below.)

Ferry, Sophie Chantal Hart Professor Emeritus of English atWellesley College, is now affiliated with Suffolk University and will participate with three others affiliated with the university— Jennifer Barber, George Kalogeris, and Fred Marchant — in the panel Ancient Tunes, New Words. The panel takes place Saturday, May 14, in Colonial Hall from 2pm to 3pm.

Read the the Poetry Foundation’s story about Ferry.

Courtesy

By David Ferry b. 1924 David Ferry

It is an afternoon toward the end of August:

Autumnal weather, cool following on,

And riding in, after the heat of summer,

Into the empty afternoon shade and light,

The shade full of light without any thickness at all;

You can see right through and right down into the depth

Of the light and shade of the afternoon; there isn’t

Any weight of the summer pressing down.

In the backyard of the house next door there’s a kid,

Maybe eleven or twelve, and a young man,

Visitors at the house whom I don’t know,

The house in which the sound of some kind of party,

Perhaps even a wedding, is going on.

Somehow you can tell from the tone of their voices

That they don’t know each other very well—

Two guests at the party, one of them, maybe,

A friend of the bride or groom, the other the son

Or the younger brother, maybe, of somebody there.

A couple of blocks away the wash of traffic

Dimly sounds, as if we were near the ocean.

They’re shooting baskets, amiably and mildly.

The noise of the basketball, though startlingly louder

Than the voices of the two of them as they play,

Is peaceable as can be, something like meter.

The earnest voice of the kid, girlish and manly,

And the voice of the young man, carefully playing the game

Of having a grown-up conversation with him:

I can tell the young man is teaching the boy by example,

The easy way he dribbles the ball and passes it

Back with a single gesture of wrist to make it

Easy for the kid to be in synch;

Giving and taking, perfectly understood.

http://masspoetry.crowdvine.com/talks/19076

About Jacquelyn

Jacquelyn Malone has been a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship grant in poetry. Her work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cimarron Review, Cortland Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry Northwest. The poem published in the Beloit Poetry Journal was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her chapbook All Waters Run to Lethe was recently published by Finishing Line Press.

View all posts by Jacquelyn →

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