Poet Gary Synder Wins $100,000 Wallace Stevens Award

Posted on September 28, 2012

The Academy of American Poets' Board of Chancellors selected poet Gary Synder as the winner of the Wallace Stevens Award. The award carries a $100,000 cash prize.

Jane Hirshfield, chancellor of The Academy, said in a statement: "Gary Snyder has brought to American poetry a lyric poem whose subjects and views are objectively epic. His words look into the world and our human lives with acuity, affection, and the ethics of a ten-thousand-year perception. They have altered and marked both how we know and how we say."

Snyder was given the award for "outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry." Brenda Hillman won the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, which includes a cash prize of $25,000. Also receiving $25,000 was poet David Wojahn who won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for his work World Tree. The James Laughlin Award went to Catherine Barnett for her work The Game of Boxes. She received a $5,000 cash prize.