Whiting Award Winners
Since 1985, the Foundation has supported creative writing through the Whiting Awards, which are given annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama.
While I sit with all the other patients in the waiting room, I always think that I will ask Dr. Wald what exactly is happening to my eyes, but when I go into his examining room alone it is dark, with a circle of light on the wall, and the doctor is standing with his back to me arranging silver instruments on a cloth. The big chair is empty for me to go sit in, and each time I feel as if I have gone into a dream straight from being awake, the way you do sometimes at night, and I go to the chair without saying anything.
Breathing Room
There are lives twice as long as others;
they might look back on those
behind them like runners nearing
the finish line relieved
not to have been out of it so early.
We wake one day to an understanding
about our diminishment yet
by evening, we’ve turned that corner—
the present is everything; its tedium
flaring in the window’s reflection.
You get tired of being this way.
Plans go awry & other plans
get made elsewhere, somewhere
elaborately empty. Still, we believe
ourselves slightly beautiful as we check
the door then fill the bedside glass,
means of accumulation mastered,
our complaint well turned.
Unheard behind that window, the night sky—
boundless—still roars.
All right, maybe I do. Maybe I do talk first and think later. Yes, it’s true, I admit it freely. It’s because I’m from the city. Now, you can say to me, Glory B., it’s no crime to think about what you’re going to say before you say it, to figure out how it relates to the topic being discussed, or if it does at all, or if what you’re going to say has the slightest factual basis whatsoever. I’ve got that argument down cold, because listen, words are my music. When I talk, I improvise. It’s not so much what I’m saying as how it sounds. Take jazz, all right, let’s use jazz as an analogy, parallels are always good. Now, what I mean is, what—do you think every time Bird sat down to blow he had the whole musical score right in front of him? Did he have the whole thing thought out? He did not. Well, he probably did not, I’m not entirely familiar with the man’s work, but probably, most likely he improvised is what I’m saying.
And we divorced in the survives and O
It was a comedy and first you ever slept with me
And marry me and marry me and O
How fat I used to be
Daddy was often eager to play catch, since he felt society expected this from a loving, caring father. A confidence that soared and a glovehand that fell, still there was no baseball near either. Duplicity has killed more black men than gin. In a southpaw, what they appreciate most is this sort of "live arm." From his mouth words rushed like richly fed rapids, leaving him ever vulnerable to ascription.
And the body is beautifully there, like hoarfrost.
Tears on its face now glimmering like dimes
falling from a slot machine, or a stream, thought lost,
that breaks through fresh snow at wintertime.
From Brother Salvage, posted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press
While I sit with all the other patients in the waiting room, I always think that I will ask Dr. Wald what exactly is happening to my eyes, but when I go into his examining room alone it is dark, with a circle of light on the wall, and the doctor is standing with his back to me arranging silver instruments on a cloth. The big chair is empty for me to go sit in, and each time I feel as if I have gone into a dream straight from being awake, the way you do sometimes at night, and I go to the chair without saying anything.
Breathing Room
There are lives twice as long as others;
they might look back on those
behind them like runners nearing
the finish line relieved
not to have been out of it so early.
We wake one day to an understanding
about our diminishment yet
by evening, we’ve turned that corner—
the present is everything; its tedium
flaring in the window’s reflection.
You get tired of being this way.
Plans go awry & other plans
get made elsewhere, somewhere
elaborately empty. Still, we believe
ourselves slightly beautiful as we check
the door then fill the bedside glass,
means of accumulation mastered,
our complaint well turned.
Unheard behind that window, the night sky—
boundless—still roars.
All right, maybe I do. Maybe I do talk first and think later. Yes, it’s true, I admit it freely. It’s because I’m from the city. Now, you can say to me, Glory B., it’s no crime to think about what you’re going to say before you say it, to figure out how it relates to the topic being discussed, or if it does at all, or if what you’re going to say has the slightest factual basis whatsoever. I’ve got that argument down cold, because listen, words are my music. When I talk, I improvise. It’s not so much what I’m saying as how it sounds. Take jazz, all right, let’s use jazz as an analogy, parallels are always good. Now, what I mean is, what—do you think every time Bird sat down to blow he had the whole musical score right in front of him? Did he have the whole thing thought out? He did not. Well, he probably did not, I’m not entirely familiar with the man’s work, but probably, most likely he improvised is what I’m saying.
And we divorced in the survives and O
It was a comedy and first you ever slept with me
And marry me and marry me and O
How fat I used to be
Daddy was often eager to play catch, since he felt society expected this from a loving, caring father. A confidence that soared and a glovehand that fell, still there was no baseball near either. Duplicity has killed more black men than gin. In a southpaw, what they appreciate most is this sort of "live arm." From his mouth words rushed like richly fed rapids, leaving him ever vulnerable to ascription.
And the body is beautifully there, like hoarfrost.
Tears on its face now glimmering like dimes
falling from a slot machine, or a stream, thought lost,
that breaks through fresh snow at wintertime.
From Brother Salvage, posted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press