Be With by Forrest Gander wins the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
New Directions is overjoyed by the news that our poet, translator, and dear friend Forrest Gander—whom we first published in 1998—has won this year’s Pulitzer Prize!
Read “Epitaph” from Be With below.
Congratulations, Forrest! We are so happy for you!
Love, New Directions
EPITAPH
To write You
existed me
would not be merely
a deaf translation.
For there is no
sequel to the passage when
I saw—as you would
never again
be revealed—you see me
as I would never
again be revealed.
Where I stand now
before the throne of
glory, the script
must remain hidden. Where,
but in the utterance itself?
Born halt and
blind, hooped-in by
obligations, aware
of the stare of
the animal inside, I
hide behind mixed
instrumentalities
as behind a square
of crocodile scute—
while cyanide drifts
from clouds to
the rivers. And in this
too might be seen
a figuration
of the human,
another intimately
lethal gesture of our
common existence.
Though I also wear
my life into death, the
ugliness I originate
outlives me.
Published