{"id":37608,"date":"2018-09-11T13:54:06","date_gmt":"2018-09-11T19:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=37608"},"modified":"2019-01-09T10:54:34","modified_gmt":"2019-01-09T16:54:34","slug":"nancy-takacs-the-worrier-wins-15-bytes-book-award-for-poetery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/nancy-takacs-the-worrier-wins-15-bytes-book-award-for-poetery\/","title":{"rendered":"Nancy Takacs’ “The Worrier” Wins 15 Bytes Book Award for Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our relationship to the environment, notions of fatherhood, patriarchy and violence, and the way one can come to live by language appear in the poems of the finalists for this year\u2019s 15 Bytes Book Award in poetry. Nancy Takacs\u2019 \u201cThe Worrier,\u201d a collection of interior dialogues coming to terms with the physical world, has been awarded the top prize by this year\u2019s judges (see our review here<\/a>). Adam Giannelli\u2019s \u201cTremulous Hinge\u201d and Mike White\u2019s \u201cAddendum to a Miracle\u201d are named as finalists for the prize. A reading\/award ceremony for the winner and finalists will take place at The Printed Garden<\/a> in Sandy, Oct. 17, 7-8 p.m., as part of this year\u2019s Utah Humanities Book Festival. The event is free and open to the public.<\/p>\n

For the annual prize, presented by Artists of Utah, nominations were accepted for professional, independently published books that appeared in 2017. Three guest, Utah-based judges were tasked with ranking nominations based on artistry\/writing, and \u201cthat\u00a0indefinable quality that makes a book special and unforgettable.\u201d Judges also ranked books based on their connection to Utah in theme, setting or the residence of the author; however, the third category was only activated in the case of a tie.<\/p>\n

Currently in its sixth iteration, the 15 Bytes Book Awards are the only statewide literary book award for adult fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. The awards also recognize excellence in publishing in the category of art book.<\/p>\n

Judges’ Citations<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Winner: \u201cThe Worrier,\u201d by Nancy Takacs<\/p>\n

In her brilliant new collection, \u201cThe Worrier,\u201d Nancy Takacs has presented her readers with her most finely nuanced and psychologically\u00a0sophisticated collection of poetry to date.\u00a0 Each piece is an inner dialogue, a meditation, an experiential episode that seems to reveal the true nature of our relationship with our environment fragment by fragment,\u00a0as we struggle to come to terms with our place in the physical world.\u00a0 There are two voices \u2014 the worrier and the answer \u2014 and Takacs’ worrier\u00a0is presented in diametric opposition to the natural world, and to its processes.\u00a0 The natural world moves forward with wildness, sometimes purely instinctively, and sometimes without any apparent impetus.\u00a0Takacs seems to point out, by way of this collection, that it is our intellect, that inner voice in which we place so much trust that frequently confounds us.\u00a0 We are apparently, by nature, unable to trust the design and wisdom of the kingdom into which we’ve\u00a0been born.\u00a0 We are constantly sabotaged by our rebellious sense of self-importance, and by our insistence that the natural world is something that we can, somehow, bend to our will.\u00a0 But our determination to understand the natural world only\u00a0in our own terms will only result in the muting of the wisdom of the earth, and will leave us nothing but our own noise.\u00a0An extraordinary addition to this poet’s oeuvre.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Finalist: \u201cTremulous Hinge,\u201d by Adam Giannelli<\/p>\n

Adam Giannelli\u2019s \u201cTremulous Hinge\u201d is a portrait of the poet making a choice to live by language\u2014language that, like the rest of life, doesn\u2019t always come easily, that may come in fits and starts and stutters, as we see in the first poem of his collection, but is all the more beautiful because born of struggle. Giannelli embraces what can<\/em> be said, and he says it sonically, as we understand it aurally; his poems insist on being read aloud. \u201cA group of men corral dominoes on a table.\/ On the citronella candle, a flame glistens\/ like the tip of a paintbrush\/ dipped in amber. It fans out, flattened in the wind, brush on canvas\u2014\u201c a visual metaphor that is best understood aloud, \u201cwhen listening\/ to them\/ is enough.\u201d The poet\u2019s pen, too, burns with a flickering, stuttering flame, random trace gases having their say as they burn away, his focus not on the thing itself but on its edges\u2014not the wave, but the foam at its edges; not the building, but the shadow ensnaring one side; \u201cnot the field so much as the deer\u201d\u2014the bright [and dark] minutiae\/ in the universe.\u201d Every would-be poet attempts it, but only the best succeed: Giannelli makes us \u201cshudder\/ with the simplest words.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Finalist: \u201cAddendum to a Miracle\u201d, by Mike White<\/p>\n

The poems in Mike White\u2019s \u201cAddendum to a Miracle\u201d explore complex notions of fatherhood, patriarchy, violence, and self with an understated yet sharp gaze. That gaze delineates thresholds of dark and light \u2014 the body pressing its \u201cweight\/ against the big revolving door,\/tumbling into the sunny afternoon,\/mildly stunned that it\u2019s there.\u201d \u00a0Several of White\u2019s poems are haikus or similar in their spareness that hides what is unspoken. The words create silhouettes on a page and lines range from ethereal to corporeal, from \u201cin the shadows\/of the ferris wheel\/bright hints of deer\u201d to \u201cmy son insists\/I am a father\/and he is a brown bear.\/It goes this way.\/He gets hungry\/and by and by\/I am chosen.\u201d The poems\u2019 images often\u00a0rest on the cusp of invisibility and apparition. The endings of the poems are not static, but instead leave the reader at the entrance of an open door. Yet what do final lines open into? Both the existentialism of \u201cwhite space\u201d (a pun?) and \u201cGod\u2019s\/good eye\/waiting out the rain.\u201d These images that seem opposite give keys to reading the poems–presence and absence coinciding on a tightrope.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our thanks to all of those who nominated a book. Our thanks also go to the judges and the interns who helped us pull off this volunteer-driven program. We hope that the public and especially the literary community in Utah and beyond will consider joining this enterprise. A donation to 15 Bytes\u2019 many literary programs including its Read Local Onsite and Read Local Sunday, can be made by using Venmo to send a donation to @Artistsofutah or using to following link to donate via Paypal\/credit card.<\/p>\n


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Our relationship to the environment, notions of fatherhood, patriarchy and violence, and the way one can come to live by language appear in the poems of the finalists for this year\u2019s 15 Bytes Book Award in poetry. Nancy Takacs\u2019 \u201cThe Worrier,\u201d a collection of interior dialogues coming to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3230,35],"tags":[1710,3201,3123,1933],"class_list":["post-37608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-awards","category-literary-arts","tag-15-bytes-book-awards","tag-adam-giannelli","tag-mike-white","tag-nancy-takacs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/poetry.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 07:14:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37608"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37972,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37608\/revisions\/37972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}