To the Editors:
In “Visiting the Gregorys” (September 1990) Robert Phillips says that Mark Strand was “deprived” of the Pulitzer Prize for verse because his being awarded the prize was “leaked” before the official announcement, and the “committee” therefore awarded the prize to someone else. As I was chairman of the Pulitzer jury for verse that year I am able to say that this did not happen.
There were three jurors: John Ashbery, Nona Balakian, and I. Ashbery and Balakian wished to award the prize to Mark Strand for a book of prose poems. I pointed out that this could not be done, as the Pulitzer regulations stated that the prize was to be given to a book of verse. They then wished to give the prize to Strand for a book of verse he had also published that year. I reported this to the board; it was the majority opinion and I must yield to it, but I did not agree. Strand’s verse had been commended for its restraint—in my report to the board I quoted these lines by Roy Campbell:
On Some South African Novelists
You praise the firm restraint with which they write—
I’m with you there of course:
They use the snaffle and the curb all right,
But where’s the bloody horse?
I said that I thought Robert Penn Warren’s book stronger than Mark Strand’s, and that it would be my choice. Then I left for a ten-week visit
