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.