Library of Congress Awards Gerald Stern The Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry

Posted on October 27, 2012

Gerald Stern is the winner of The Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry. He will be awarded the prize by the Library of Congress on January 14, 2013. The Bobbitt Prize is a biennial $10,000 award that recognizes a book of poetry written by an American and published during the preceding two years, or the lifetime achievement of an American poet.

Stern won the prize for his poetry collection, Early Collected Poems: 1965-1992, which was published by W. W. Norton & Company in July, 2010.

Robert Casper, head of the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress, calls Stern "one of America's great poet-proclaimers in the Whitmanic tradition - with moments of humor and whimsy, and an enduring generosity, his work celebrates the mythologizing power of the art."