Transit becomes an act of transcendence in Mary Austin Speaker's The Bridge. I love how each section of the book ends almost where it begins, how the world comes as it goes, flash after flash - and just when things begin to blur we awake to astonishing / geometry, to an awareness that ascent is only a way / toward another opening. The Bridge limns with unmatched grace the internal and external process of daily passage. -Joseph Massey

Poetry. Winner of our 11th Annual Book Prize Contest, chosen by Matthea Harvey. CEREMONY is Mary Austin Speaker's first collection of poems. The book begins in bewilderment and ends in a hurricane of trust. In between are collaged epistles, fragmented love poems, and a litany of mutations.

This book arrives in a shimmery white envelope, woven of strongest spider silk, impossible to open. If, however, you whisper 'yes' to it, it opens of its own accord and showers you with snow. A handbook called The New Rules of Causality in which 'hillsides follow lions' lands at your ankle, a Word Kaleidoscope rolls down the hall. Reach in to dig out the tiny boxes lodged in the far corner of the package. They are labeled 'mystery' and 'hope.'--Matthea Harvey