Winning Writers has announced the winners of its annual War Poetry Contest:

• First Place – Kyle McDonald
• Second Place – Julian Damanas
• Third Place – Aliene Pylant

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass is the winner of the 2007 National Book Award.

Robert Lee Brewer wins the Millennial Poetry School Award for explaining the school’s basic philosophy in explicit and simple terms:

I’ve seen some poets argue that metrical poetry is the only way, while other poets push against forms of any kind. I’ve seen poets say that real poetry should only be concerned with language and structure, while other poets only acknowledge poems with some kind of real meaning at the heart of the poem. All the while, I’ve thought poets and those who love poetry should embrace the whole durned thing–from the teenage boy writing a poem for his unrequited love to the post-grad scholar constructing an anagrammatic series of sestinas that incorporate mythological interpretations of the meaning of pop culture references in the 1980s (hey, whatever floats yer boat).

There are no official rules or sanctioning body for the Millennial Poetry School Award. I just happened to notice that Robert and I agree on this basic tenet of poetics – all forms and structures are valid. To a poet of the Millennial School, all poetic techniques from the past can be drawn upon as well as new techniques and those of the future. Millennial poets invent their own forms and borrow from others. The only rule is effectiveness.

New York Entertainment tells us all how to be a National Book Award Winner.

While I prefer to talk about the winners, it’s significant to sometimes mention the losers. It looks like Amiri Baraka is this week’s big one.

Back to the winners … Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky is getting an award for lifetime achievement in poetry.