essay on forms of poetry

How to write a poetry essay

• August 26, 2023

Whether you love literature or are just curious, this guide will help you understand, enjoy, and talk about poetry. So, let’s start exploring the world of lines and symbols, where each one tells a story to discover.

Here are the steps on writing a poetry essay.

Choose a poem

The first step is, of course, to choose a poem to write your essay . 

It should be one that you find interesting, thought-provoking, or emotionally resonant. It’s important to select a poem that you can engage with and analyze effectively.

• Choose a poem that genuinely captures your interest. Look for poems that evoke emotions, thoughts, or curiosity when you read them.
• Consider the themes addressed in the poem. It should offer ample material for analysis.

When choosing a poem

So for this guide, let’s choose Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” You’ll see a short excerpt of this poem for your understanding. 

Poem example for poetry essay

Because i couldn not stop for Death by Emily Dickinson

       Because I could not stop for Death –        He kindly stopped for me –        The Carriage held but just Ourselves –        And Immortality.        We slowly drove – He knew no haste        And I had put away        My labor and my leisure too,        For His Civility –        We passed the School, where Children strove        At Recess – in the Ring –        We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –        We passed the Setting Sun –        The poem continues....

This poem is intriguing due to its exploration of mortality, the afterlife, and eternity. The imagery and language in the poem provide ample material for analysis, making it a suitable choice for a comprehensive essay.

After carefully choosing the poem that interests you, understanding the poem is the biggest key to writing an effective and nice poetry essay.

Understand the poem

Reading the poem several times to grasp its meaning is the most important part of a good analysis. You must first analyze the structure, rhyme scheme , meter and literary tools used in the poem.

For a solid understanding, you should:

• Read the poem multiple times to familiarize yourself with its content. Each reading may reveal new insights.
• Identify the central themes or messages the poem conveys.
• Study the rhyme scheme and meter (rhythmic pattern) of the poem.
• Consider how the structure, including its stanzas, lines, and breaks, contributes to the poem's meaning and impact.

For example

Remember, understanding the poem thoroughly is the foundation for a well-informed analysis. Take your time to grasp the poem’s various elements before moving on to the next steps in your essay.

Now that we have a clear understanding of the poem, let’s move into writing the introduction. 

Write a catchy introduction

• Begin with an attention-grabbing hook sentence that piques the reader's interest.
• Provide the necessary information about the poem and its author. Mention the poet's name and title of the poem.
• Offer some context about the poem's time period, literary movement, or cultural influences.
• Present your thesis statement , which outlines the main argument or focus of your essay.

Poetry essay introduction example

Introduction

Thesis statement for poetry essays

A thesis statement is a clear and concise sentence or two that presents the main argument or point of your essay . It provides a roadmap for your reader, outlining what they can expect to find in your essay.

In the case of a poetry essay, your thesis statement should capture the central message, themes, or techniques you’ll be discussing in relation to the poem.

Why is the thesis important for a poetry essay?

By reading your thesis statement, your audience should have a clear idea of what to expect from your poem analysis essay.

When creating a thesis statement, keep these in mind: 

• Start by identifying the key elements of the poem that you want to discuss. These could be themes, literary devices, emotions conveyed, or the poet's intentions.
• Based on the key elements you've identified, formulate a central argument that encapsulates your main analysis. What is the poem trying to convey? What are you trying to say about the poem?
• Your thesis should be specific and focused. Avoid vague or broad statements. Instead, provide a clear direction for your analysis.

Poetry essasy thesis statement example

....(introduction starts) ....(introduction continues) ....(introduction continues) In "Because I could not stop for Death," Emily Dickinson employs vivid imagery, personification, and an unconventional perspective on mortality to explore the transcendence of death and the eternity of the soul. Thesis statement, which is usually the last sentence of your introduction

Analyze language and imagery

Language and image analysis in poetry involves a close examination of the words, phrases and literary devices used by the poet. In this step you must uncover the deeper layers of meaning, emotion and sensory experiences conveyed by the poet’s choice of language and imagery.

Why language and imagery?

• Start by identifying and listing the literary devices present in the poem. These could include metaphors, similes, personification, symbolism, alliteration, onomatopoeia, and more.
• For each identified device, explain its significance. How does it contribute to the poem's meaning, mood, or tone?
• Analyze how the literary devices interact with the context of the poem. How do they relate to the themes, characters, or situations presented in the poem?
• Discuss how the use of specific language and imagery influences the reader's emotional response and understanding of the poem.

Continuing with Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death,” let’s analyze the use of imagery:

Language and imagery analysis example

Lines chosen for analysis

Discuss themes in body paragraphs

Exploring themes helps you grasp the deeper meaning of the poem and connect it to broader human experiences. Understanding the themes allows you to uncover what the poet is attempting to convey and how the poem relates to readers on a universal level.

In this step, you will likely dedicate multiple body paragraphs to the analysis of various aspects of language and imagery. Each body paragraph should focus on a specific literary device, phrase, or aspect of language and imagery.

Here’s how you can structure the body paragraphs.

Poetry essay body paragraphs example

Body Paragraph 1: Identify and Explain Literary Devices

Body Paragraph 2: Context and Interaction with Themes

Body Paragraph 3: Reader's emotional response and understanding

Provide evidence from the poem

Providing evidence involves quoting specific lines or stanzas from the poem to support the points you’re making in your analysis. These quotes serve as concrete examples that demonstrate how the poet uses language, imagery, or literary devices to convey specific meanings or emotions.

• Select lines or stanzas from the poem that directly relate to the point you're making in your analysis.
• Introduce each quote with context, explaining the significance of the lines and how they contribute to your analysis.
• Use quotation marks to indicate that you're using the poet's language.
• After providing the quote, interpret its meaning. Explain how the language, imagery, or devices used in the quoted lines contribute to your analysis.

Providing evidence example

In your essay, you should include several quotes and interpret them to reinforce your points. Quoting specific lines from the poem allows you to showcase the poet’s language while demonstrating how these lines contribute to the poem’s overall expression.

Write a conclusion

Conclusion paragraph is the last sentence of your poem analysis essay. It reinforces your thesis statement and emphasizes your insights.

Additionally, the conclusion offers a chance to provide a final thought that leaves a lasting impression on the reader. In your conclusion, make sure to:

• Start by rephrasing your thesis statement. Remind the reader of the main argument you've made in your essay.
• Provide a concise summary of the main points. Avoid introducing new information; focus on the key ideas.
• Discuss the broader significance or implications. How does the poem's message relate to readers beyond its specific context?
• End with a thoughtful reflection, observation, or question that leaves the reader with something to ponder.

Poetry essay conclusion example

In your essay, the conclusion serves as a final opportunity to leave a strong impression on the reader by summarizing your analysis and offering insights into the poem’s broader significance.

Now, it’s time to double check what you’ve written.

Proofread and revise your essay

Edit your essay for clarity, coherence, tense selection , correct headings , etc. Ensure that your ideas flow logically and your analysis is well-supported. Remember, a poetry essay is an opportunity to delve into the nuances of a poem’s language, themes, and emotions.

• Review each paragraph to ensure ideas flow logically from one to the next.
• Check for grammar and punctuation errors.
• Verify that your evidence from the poem is accurately quoted and explained.
• Make sure your language is clear and effectively conveys your analysis.

By proofreading and revising, you can refine your essay, improving its readability and ensuring that your insights are communicated accurately.

So this was the last part, you’re now ready to write your first poem analysis (poetry) essay. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What should i include in the introduction of a poetry essay.

In the introduction, provide background information about the poem and poet. Include the poem’s title, publication date, and any relevant context that helps readers understand its significance.

Can I include my emotional responses in a poetry essay?

Yes, you can discuss your emotional responses, but ensure they are supported by your analysis of the poem’s literary elements. Avoid focusing solely on personal feelings.

Is it important to understand the poet's background when writing a poetry essay?

While it can provide context, your focus should be on analyzing the poem itself. If the poet’s background is relevant to the poem’s interpretation, mention it briefly.

What's the best way to conclude a poetry essay?

In the conclusion, summarize your main points and tie them together. Offer insights into the poem’s broader significance, implications, or lasting impact.

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In literary nonfiction, no form is quite as complicated as the lyric essay. Lyrical essays explore the elements of poetry and creative nonfiction in complex and experimental ways, combining the subject matter of autobiography with poetry’s figurative devices and musicality of language.

For both poets and creative nonfiction writers, lyric essays are a gold standard of experimentation and language, but conquering the form takes lots of practice. What is a lyric essay, and how do you write one? Let’s break down this challenging CNF form, with lyric essay examples, before examining how you might approach it yourself.

Want to explore the lyric essay further? See our lyric essay writing course with instructor Gretchen Clark. 

What is a lyric essay?

The lyric essay combines the autobiographical information of a personal essay with the figurative language, forms, and experimentations of poetry. In the lyric essay, the rules of both poetry and prose become suggestions, because the form of the essay is constantly changing, adapting to the needs, ideas, and consciousness of the writer.

Lyric essay definition: The lyric essay combines autobiographical writing with the figurative language, forms, and experimentations of poetry.

Lyric essays are typically written in a poetic prose style . (We’ll expand on the difference between prose poetry and lyric essay shortly.) Lyric essays employ many of the poetic devices that poets use, including devices of repetition and rhetorical devices in literature.

That said, there are few conventions for the lyric essay, other than to experiment, experiment, experiment. While the form itself is an essay, there’s no reason you can’t break the bounds of expression.

One tactic, for example, is to incorporate poetry into the essay itself. You might start your essay with a normal paragraph, then describe something specific through a sonnet or villanelle , then express a different idea through a POV shift, a list, or some other form. Lyric essays can also borrow from the braided essay, the hermit crab, and other forms of creative nonfiction .

In truth, there’s very little that unifies all lyric essays, because they’re so wildly experimental. They’re also a bit tricky to define—the line between a lyric essay and the prose poem, in particular, is very hazy.

Rather than apply a one-size-fits-all definition for the lyric essay, which doesn’t exist, let’s pay close attention to how lyric essayists approach the open-ended form.

There are few conventions for the lyric essay, other than to experiment, experiment, experiment

Personal essay vs. lyric essay: An example of each

At its simplest, the lyric essay’s prose style is different from that of the personal essay, or other forms of creative nonfiction.

Personal essay example

Here are the opening two paragraphs from Beth Ann Fennelly’s personal essay “ I Survived the Blizzard of ’79. ”

“We didn’t question. Or complain. It wouldn’t have occurred to us, and it wouldn’t have helped. I was eight. Julie was ten.

We didn’t know yet that this blizzard would earn itself a moniker that would be silk-screened on T-shirts. We would own such a shirt, which extended its tenure in our house as a rag for polishing silver.”

The prose in this personal essay excerpt is descriptive, linear, and easy to understand. Fennelly gives us the information we need to make sense of her world, as well as the foreshadow of what’s to come in her essay.

Lyric essay example

Now, take this excerpt from a lyric essay, “ Life Code ” by J. A. Knight:

“The dream goes like this: blue room of water. God light from above. Child’s fist, foot, curve, face, the arc of an eye, the symmetry of circles… and then an opening of this body—which surprised her—a movement so clean and assured and then the push towards the light like a frog or a fish.” 

The prose in Knight’s lyric essay cannot be read the same way as a personal essay might be. Here, Knight’s prose is a sort of experience—a way of exploring the dream through language as shifting and ethereal as dreams themselves. Where the personal essay transcribes experiences, the lyric essay creates them.

Where the personal essay transcribes experiences, the lyric essay creates them.

For more examples of the craft, The Seneca Review and Eastern Iowa Review both have a growing archive of lyric essays submitted to their journals. In essence, there is no form to a lyric essay—rather, form and language are experimented with interchangeably, guided only by the narrative you seek to write.

Lyric Essay Vs Prose Poem

Lyric essays are commonly confused with prose poetry . In truth, there is no clear line separating the two, and plenty of essays, including some of the lyric essay examples in this article, can also be called prose poems.

Well, what’s the difference? A prose poem, broadly defined, is a poem written in paragraphs. Unlike a traditional poem, the prose poem does not make use of line breaks: the line breaks simply occur at the end of the page. However, all other tactics of poetry are in the prose poet’s toolkit, and you can even play with poetry forms in the prose poem, such as writing the prose sonnet .

Lyric essays also blend the techniques of prose and poetry. Here are some general differences between the two:

• Lyric essays tend to be longer. A prose poem is rarely more than a page. Some lyric essays are longer than 20 pages.
• Lyric essays tend to be more experimental. One paragraph might be in prose, the next, poetry. The lyric essay might play more with forms like lists, dreams, public signs, or other types of media and text.
• Prose poems are often more stream-of-conscious. The prose poet often charts the flow of their consciousness on the page. Lyric essayists can do this, too, but there’s often a broader narrative organizing the piece, even if it’s not explicitly stated or recognizable.

The two share many similarities, too, including:

• An emphasis on language, musicality, and ambiguity.
• Rejection of “objective meaning” and the desire to set forth arguments.
• An unobstructed flow of ideas.
• Suggestiveness in thoughts and language, rather than concrete, explicit expressions.
• Surprising or unexpected juxtapositions .
• Ingenuity and play with language and form.

In short, there’s no clear dividing line between the two. Often, the label of whether a piece is a lyric essay or a prose poem is up to the writer.

Lyric Essay Examples

The following lyric essay examples are contemporary and have been previously published online. Pay attention to how the lyric essayists interweave the essay form with a poet’s attention to language, mystery, and musicality.

“Lodge: A Lyric Essay” by Emilia Phillips

Retrieved here, from Blackbird .

This lush, evocative lyric essay traverses the American landscape. The speaker reacts to this landscape finding poetry in the rundown, and seeing her own story—family trauma, religion, and the random forces that shape her childhood. Pay attention to how the essay defies conventional standards of self-expression. In between narrative paragraphs are lists, allusions, memories, and the many twists and turns that seem to accompany the narrator on their journey through Americana.

“Spiral” by Nicole Callihan

Retrieved here, from Birdcoat Quarterly . 

Notice how this gorgeous essay evolves down the spine of its central theme: the sleepless swallows. The narrator records her thoughts about the passage of time, her breast examination, her family and childhood, and the other thoughts that arise in her mind as she compares them, again and again, to the mysterious swallows who fly without sleep. This piece demonstrates how lyric essays can encompass a wide array of ideas and threads, creating a kaleidoscope of language for the reader to peer into, come away with something, peer into again, and always see something different.

“Star Stuff” by Jessica Franken

Retrieved here, from Seneca Review .

This short, imagery -driven lyric essay evokes wonder at our seeming smallness, our seeming vastness. The narrator juxtaposes different ideas for what the body can become, playing with all our senses and creating odd, surprising connections. Read this short piece a few times. Ask yourself, why are certain items linked together in the same paragraph? What is the train of thought occurring in each new sentence, each new paragraph? How does the final paragraph wrap up the lyric essay, while also leaving it open ended? There’s much to interpret in this piece, so engage with it slowly, read it over several times.

5 approaches to writing the lyric essay

This form of creative writing is tough for writers because there’s no proper formula for writing it. However, if you have a passion for imaginative forms and want to rise to the challenge, here are several different ways to write your essay.

1. Start with your narrative

Writing the lyrical essay is a lot like writing creative nonfiction: it starts with getting words on the page. Start with a simple outline of the story you’re looking to write. Focus on the main plot points and what you want to explore, then highlight the ideas or events that will be most difficult for you to write about. Often, the lyrical form offers the writer a new way to talk about something difficult. Where words fail, form is key. Combining difficult ideas and musicality allows you to find the right words when conventional language hasn’t worked.

Emilia Phillips’ lyric essay “ Lodge ” does exactly this, letting the story’s form emphasize its language and the narrative Phillips writes about dreams, traveling, and childhood emotions.

2. Identify moments of metaphor and figurative language

The lyric essay is liberated from form, rather than constrained by it. In a normal essay, you wouldn’t want your piece overrun by figurative language, but here, boundless metaphors are encouraged—so long as they aid your message. For some essayists, it might help to start by reimagining your story as an extended metaphor.

A great example of this is Zadie Smith’s essay “ The Lazy River ,” which uses the lazy river as an extended metaphor to criticize a certain “go with the flow” mindset.

Use extended metaphors as a base for the essay, then return to it during moments of transition or key insight. Writing this way might help ground your writing process while giving you new opportunities to play with form.

3. Investigate and braid different threads

Just like the braided essay , lyric essays can certainly braid different story lines together. If anything, the freedom to play with form makes braiding much easier and more exciting to investigate. How can you use poetic forms to braid different ideas together? Can you braid an extended metaphor with the main story? Can you separate the threads into a contrapuntal, then reunite them in prose?

A simple example of threading in lyric essay is Jane Harrington’s “ Ossein Pith .” Harrington intertwines the “you” and “I” of the story, letting each character meet only when the story explores moments of “hunger.”

Whichever threads you choose to write, use the freedom of the lyric essay to your advantage in exploring the story you’re trying to set down.

4. Revise an existing piece into a lyric essay

Some CNF writers might find it easier to write their essay, then go back and revise with the elements of poetic form and figurative language. If you choose to take this route, identify the parts of your draft that don’t seem to be working, then consider changing the form into something other than prose.

For example, you might write a story, then realize it would greatly benefit the prose if it was written using the poetic device of anaphora (a repetition device using a word or phrase at the beginning of a line or paragraph). Chen Li’s lyric essay “ Baudelaire Street ” does a great job of this, using the anaphora “I would ride past” to explore childhood memory.

When words don’t work, let the lyrical form intervene.

5. Write stream-of-conscious

Stream-of-consciousness is a writing technique in which the writer charts, word-for-word, the exact order of their unfiltered thoughts on the page.

If it isn’t obvious, this is easier said than done. We naturally think faster than we write, and we also have a tendency to filter our thoughts as we think them, to the point where many thoughts go unconsciously unnoticed. Unlearning this takes a lot of practice and skill.

Nonetheless, you might notice in the lyric essay examples we shared how the essayists followed different associations with their words, one thought flowing naturally into the next, circling around a subject rather than explicitly defining it. The stream-of-conscious technique is perfect for this kind of writing, then, because it earnestly excavates the mind, creating a kind of Rorschach test that the reader can look into, interpret, see for themselves.

This technique requires a lot of mastery, but if you’re keen on capturing your own consciousness, you may find that the lyric essay form is the perfect container to hold it in.

Closing thoughts on the lyric essay form

Creative nonfiction writers have an overt desire to engage their readers with insightful stories. When language fails, the lyrical essay comes to the rescue. Although this is a challenging form to master, practicing different forms of storytelling could pave new avenues for your next nonfiction piece. Try using one of these different ways to practice the lyric craft, and get writing your next CNF story!

[…] Sean “Writing Your Truth: Understanding the Lyric Essay.” writers.com. https://writers.com/understanding-the-lyric-essay published 19 May, 2020/ accessed 13 Oct, […]

[…] https://writers.com/understanding-the-lyric-essay […]

I agree with every factor that you have pointed out. Thank you for sharing your beautiful thoughts on this. A personal essay is writing that shares an interesting, thought-provoking, sometimes entertaining, and humorous piece that is often drawn from the writer’s personal experience and at times drawn from the current affairs of the world.

[…] been wanting to learn more about lyric essay, and this seems a natural transition from […]

thanks for sharing

Thanks so much for this. Here is an updated link to my essay Spiral: https://www.birdcoatquarterly.com/post/nicole-callihan

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How to Write a Poetry Essay: Step-By-Step-Guide

Table of contents

• 1 What Is A Poetry Analysis?
• 2 How to Choose a Poem for Analysis?
• 3.0.1 Introduction
• 3.0.2 Main Body
• 3.0.3 Conclusion
• 4.1 Title of the Poem
• 4.2 Poetry Background
• 4.3 Structure of the Poem
• 4.4 Tone and Intonation of the Poetry
• 4.5 Language Forms and Symbols of the Poetry
• 4.6 Poetic devices
• 4.7 Music of the Poem
• 4.8 Purpose of Poem
• 5 Poetry Analysis Template
• 6 Example of Poem Analysis

Edgar Allan Poe once said:

“Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.” 

The reader’s soul enjoys the beauty of the words masterfully expressed by the poet in a few lines. How much meaning is invested in these words, and even more lies behind them? For this reason, poetry is a constant object of scientific interest and the center of literary analysis.

As a university student, especially in literary specialties, you will often come across the need to write a poetry analysis essay. It may seem very difficult when you encounter such an essay for the first time. This is not surprising because even experienced students have difficulty performing such complex studies. This article will point you in the right direction and can be used as a poetry analysis worksheet.

What Is A Poetry Analysis?

Any poetry analysis consists in an in-depth study of the subject of study and the background details in which it is located. Poetry analysis is the process of decomposing a lyrical work into its smallest components for a detailed study of the independent elements. After that, all the data obtained are reassembled to formulate conclusions and write literary analysis . The study of a specific lyric poem also includes the study of the hidden meaning of the poem, the poet’s attitude and main idea, and the expression of individual impressions. After all, the lyrics aim to reach the heart of the reader.

The goal of the poetry analysis is to understand a literary work better. This type of scientific research makes it possible to study entire categories of art on the example of specific works, classify them as certain movements, and find similarities and differences with other poems representing the era.

A poetry analysis essay is a very common type of an essay for university programs, especially in literary and philological areas. Students are often required to have extensive knowledge as well as the ability of in-depth analysis. Such work requires immersion in the context and a high level of concentration.

How to Choose a Poem for Analysis?

You are a really lucky person if you have the opportunity to choose a poem to write a poetry analysis essay independently. After all, any scientific work is moving faster and easier if you are an expert and interested in the field of study. First of all, choose a poet who appeals to you. The piece is not just a set of sentences united by a common meaning. Therefore, it is primarily a reflection of the thoughts and beliefs of the author.

Also, choose a topic that is interesting and close to you. It doesn’t matter if it is an intimate sonnet, a patriotic poem, or a skillful description of nature. The main thing is that it arouses your interest. However, pay attention to the size of the work to make your work easier. The volume should be sufficient to conduct extensive analysis but not too large to meet the requirement for a poem analysis essay.

Well, in the end, your experience and knowledge of the poetry topic are important. Stop choosing the object of study that is within the scope of your competence. In this way, you will share your expert opinion with the public, as well as save yourself from the need for additional data searches required for better understanding.

Poem Analysis Essay Outline

A well-defined structure is a solid framework for your writing. Sometimes our thoughts come quite chaotically, or vice versa, you spend many hours having no idea where to start writing. In both cases, a poem analysis outline will come to your aid. Many students feel that writing an essay plan is a waste of time. However, you should reconsider your views on such a work strategy. And although it will take you time to make a poetry analysis essay outline, it will save you effort later on. While a perfect way out is to ask professionals to write your essays online , let’s still take a look at the key features of creating a paper yourself. Working is much easier and more pleasant when you understand what to start from and what to rely on. Let’s look at the key elements of a poem analysis essay structure.

The essence of a poetry essay outline is to structure and organize your thoughts. You must divide your essay into three main sections: introduction, body, and conclusions. Then list brainstormed ideas that you are going to present in each of these parts.

Introduction

Your essay should begin with an introductory paragraph . The main purpose of this section is to attract the attention of the reader. This will ensure interest in the research. You can also use these paragraphs to provide interesting data from the author of the poem and contextual information that directly relates to your poem but is not a part of the analysis yet.

Another integral part of the poem analysis essay introduction is the strong thesis statement . This technique is used when writing most essays in order to summarize the essence of the paper. The thesis statement opens up your narrative, giving the reader a clear picture of what your work will be about. This element should be short, concise, and self-explanatory.

The central section of a literary analysis essay is going to contain all the studies you’ve carried out. A good idea would be to divide the body into three or four paragraphs, each presenting a new idea. When writing an outline for your essay, determine that in the body part, you will describe:

• The central idea.
• Analysis of poetic techniques used by the poet.
• Your observations considering symbolism.
• Various aspects of the poem.

Make sure to include all of the above, but always mind the coherence of your poem literary analysis.

In the final paragraph , you have to list the conclusions to which your poetry analysis came. This is a paragraph that highlights the key points of the study that are worth paying attention to. Ensure that the information in the conclusion matches your goals set in the introduction. The last few lines of a poem usually contain the perfect information for you to wrap up your paper, giving your readers a ground for further thought.

Tips on How to Analyze a Poem

Now, having general theoretical information about what a poetry analysis essay is, what its components are, and how exactly you can make an outline, we are ready to move on to practical data. Let’s take a closer look at the key principles that you should rely on in the poetry analysis. As you might guess, just reading a poem will not be enough to make a comprehensive analysis. You have to pay attention to the smallest details to catch what other researchers have not noticed before you.

Title of the Poem

And although the poems do not always have a title, if the work you have chosen has a name, then this is a good basis for starting the poetry analysis. The title of the poetic work gives the understanding of what the poet considers to be the key ideas of his verse. In some cases, this element directly reflects the theme and idea of the poem. However, there are also common cases when the poet plays with the name, putting the opposite information into it. Look at the correlation between the title and the content of the poem. This may give you new clues to hidden meanings.

Poetry Background

To fully immerse yourself in the context of the verse, you need to study the prerequisites for its writing. Analyze poetry and pay attention to the period of the author’s life in which the work was written. Study what emotions prevailed in a given time. The background information will help you study the verse itself and what is behind it, which is crucial for a critical analysis essay . What was the poet’s motivation, and what sensations prompted him to express himself specifically in this form? Such in-depth research will give you a broad understanding of the author’s intent and make your poem analysis essay writing more solid.

This fragment of your poem analysis essay study also includes interpretations of all the difficult or little-known words. Perhaps the analyzed poem was written using obsolete words or has poetic terms. For a competent poem analysis, you need to have an enhanced comprehension of the concepts.

Structure of the Poem

Each lyrical work consists of key elements. The theory identifies four main components of a poem’s structure: stanza, rhyme, meter, and line break. Let’s clarify each of the terms separately so that you know exactly what you are supposed to analyze.

The stanza is also called a verse. This element is a group of lines joined together and separated from other lines by a gap. This component of the poem structure exists for the ordering of the poem and the logical separation of thoughts.

The next crucial element is rhyme. This is a kind of pattern of similar sounds that make up words. There are different types of a rhyme schemes that a particular poem can follow. The difference between the species lies in the spaces between rhyming words. Thus, the most common rhyme scheme in English literature is iambic pentameter.

The meter stands for a composite of stressed and unstressed syllables, following a single scheme throughout the poem. According to the common silabotonic theory, the poem’s rhythm determines the measure of the verse and its poetic form. In other words, this is the rhythm with which lyrical works are written.

Finally, the line break is a technique for distinguishing between different ideas and sentences within the boundaries of one work. Also, the separation serves the reader as a key to understanding the meaning, thanks to the structuring of thoughts. If the ideas went continuously, this would create an extraordinary load on perception, and the reader would struggle to understand the intended message.

Writing an essay about poetry requires careful attention and analysis. Poems, although short, can be intricate and require a thorough understanding to interpret them effectively. Some students may find it challenging to analyze poetry and may consider getting professional help or pay to do an assignment on poetry. Regardless of the approach, it is essential to create a well-structured essay that examines the poem’s meaning and provides relevant examples.

Tone and Intonation of the Poetry

The tone and intonation of the poem could be analyzed based on two variables, the speaker and the recipient. Considering these two sides of the narrative, you can reach a better overview of the analyzed poem.

The first direction is to dig deeper into the author’s ideas by analyzing thematic elements. Pay attention to any information about the poet that can be gleaned from the poem. What mood was the author in when he wrote it, what exactly he felt, and what he wanted to share? What could he be hiding behind his words? Why did the poet choose the exact literary form? Is it possible to trace a life position or ideology through analysis? All of this information will help you get a clue on how to understand a poem.

The analysis of the figure of the recipient is also going to uncover some crucial keys to coherent study. Analyze a poem and determine whether the poem was written for someone specific or not. Find out whether the poet put motivational value into his work or even called readers to action. Is the writer talking to one person or a whole group? Was the poem based on political or social interests?

Language Forms and Symbols of the Poetry

Having sufficiently analyzed the evident elements of the poem, it is time to pay attention to the images and symbols. This is also called the connotative meaning of the work. It can sometimes get challenging to interpret poems, so we will see which other poetic techniques you should consider in the poetry analysis essay.

To convey intricate ideas and display thoughts more vividly, poets often use figurative language. It mostly explains some terms without directly naming them. Lyrical expression works are rich in literary devices such as metaphor, epithet, hyperbole, personification, and others. It may sometimes get really tough to research those poem elements yourself, so keep in mind buying lit essay online. Descriptive language is also one of the techniques used in poems that requires different literary devices in order to make the story as detailed as possible.

To fully understand poetry, it is not enough just to describe its structure. It is necessary to analyze a poem, find the hidden meanings, multiple artistic means, references the poet makes, and the language of writing.

Poetic devices

Poetic devices, such as rhythm, rhyme, and sounds, are used to immerse the audience. The poets often use figurative techniques in various poems, discovering multiple possibilities for the readers to interpret the poem. To discover the composition dedicated to the precise verse, you need to read the poem carefully. Consider studying poetry analysis essay example papers to better understand the concepts. It is a certain kind of reader’s quest aimed at finding the true meaning of the metaphor the poet has hidden in the poem. Each literary device is always there for a reason. Try to figure out its purpose.

Music of the Poem

Many poems formed the basis of the songs. This does not happen by chance because each poem has its own music. Lyrical works have such elements as rhythm and rhyme. They set the pace for reading. Also, sound elements are often hidden in poems. The line break gives a hint about when to take a long pause. Try to pay attention to the arrangement of words. Perhaps this will reveal you a new vision of the analyzed poem.

Purpose of Poem

While you analyze a poem, you are supposed to search for the purpose. Each work has its purpose for writing. Perhaps this is just a process in which the author shares his emotions, or maybe it’s a skillful description of landscapes written under great impressions. Social lyrics illuminate the situation in society and pressing problems. Pay attention to whether the verse contains a call to action or an instructive context. Your task is to study the poem and analyze the motives for its writing. Understanding the general context, and especially the purpose of the poet will make your analysis unique.

Poetry Analysis Template

To make it easier for you to research, we have compiled a template for writing a poetry analysis essay. The best specialists of the our writing service have assembled the main guides that will serve as a layout for your essay. Choose a poem that suits you and analyze it according to this plan.

Introduction:

•     The title of the poem or sonnet
•     The name of the poet
•     The date the poem was first published
•     The background information and interesting facts about the poet and the poem
•     Identify the structure of the poem, and the main components
•     Find out the data about the speaker and recipient
•     State the purpose of the poem
•     Distinguish the topic and the idea of the verse

Figurative language:

•     Study the literary devices
•     Search for the hidden meanings

Following these tips, you will write a competitive poem analysis essay. Use these techniques, and you will be able to meet the basic requirements for quality work. However, don’t forget to add personality to your essay. Analyze both the choices of the author of the poem and your own vision. First of all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Do not limit yourself to dry analysis, add your own vision of the poem. In this way, you will get a balanced essay that will appeal to teachers.

Example of Poem Analysis

Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise,” is a powerful anthem of strength and resilience that has become an iconic piece of literature. The poem was written in the 1970s during the civil rights movement and was published in Angelou’s collection of poetry, “And Still I Rise,” in 1978. The structure of the poem is unique in that it is not divided into stanzas but is composed of a series of short phrases that are separated by semicolons. This creates a sense of continuity and momentum as the poem moves forward. The lack of stanzas also reflects the speaker’s determination to keep going, regardless of the obstacles she faces. The tone of the poem is confident and defiant, with a strong sense of pride in the speaker’s identity and heritage. The intonation is rhythmic and musical, with a repeated refrain that emphasizes the theme of rising above adversity. The language forms used in the poem are simple and direct. One of the most powerful symbols in the poem is the image of the rising sun… FULL POEM ANALYSIS

Our database is filled with a wide range of poetry essay examples that can help you understand how to analyze and write about poetry. Whether you are a student trying to improve your essay writing skills or a poetry enthusiast looking to explore different perspectives on your favorite poems, our collection of essays can provide valuable insights and inspiration. So take a look around and discover new ways to appreciate and interpret the power of poetry!

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6.1: What is Poetry?

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• Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap
• City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

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What is Poetry?

Poetry is a condensed form of writing. As an art, it can effectively invoke a range of emotions in the reader. It can be presented in a number of forms — ranging from traditional rhymed poems such as sonnets to contemporary free verse. Poetry has always been intrinsically tied to music and many poems work with rhythm. It often brings awareness of current issues such as the state of the environment, but can also be read just for the sheer pleasure.

A poet makes the invisible visible. The invisible includes our deepest feelings and angsts, and also our joys, sorrows, and unanswered questions of being human. How is a poet able to do this? A poet uses fresh and original language , and is more interested in how the arrangement of words affects the reader rather than solely grammatical construction. The poet thinks about how words sound , the musicality within each word and also how the words come together.

Like fiction writers, poets mostly show rather than tell . They describe the scene vividly using as few words as possible and prefer to describe rather than analyze, leaving the latter to the people who read and write about poetry as you are doing in this class.

The Purpose of Poetry

If you’ve taken a composition or freshman writing course, you might recognize some familiar terms used above — summarizes, sources, persuades, ethos. These are all words you will rarely, if ever, use in reference to writing poetry. And why is that? Well, what’s the purpose of poetry? Perhaps this is not an easy question to answer. In fact, the answer might depend on time and culture. Epics such as Gilgamesh aided in memorization and preserved stories meant to be passed down orally. The British Romantics valued the pleasure derived from hearing and reading poetry. In some cultures poetry is important in ritual and religious practice. In contemporary times, many describe poetry as being a tool for self-expression.

In the excellent glossary in his book How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry , poet Edward Hirsch provides the following definition for a poem:

Poem: A made thing, a verbal construct, an event in language. The word poesis means “making;” and the oldest term for the poet means “maker.” The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics points out that the medieval and Renaissance poets used the word makers , as in “courtly makers,” as a precise equivalent for poets. (Hence William Dunbar’s “Lament for the Makers.”) The word poem came into English in the sixteenth century and has been with us ever since to denote a form of fabrication, a verbal composition, a made thing.

William Carlos Williams defined the poem as “a small (or large) machine made of words.” (He added that there is nothing redundant about a machine.) Wallace Stevens characterized poetry as “a revelation of words by means of the words.” In his helpful essay “What is Poetry?” linguist Roman Jakobson declared:

“Poeticity is present when the word is felt as a word and not a mere representation of the object being named or an outburst of emotion, when words and their composition, their meaning, their external and internal form, acquire a weight and value of their own instead of referring indifferently to reality.”

Ben Johnson referred to the art of poetry as “the craft of making.” The old Irish word cerd, meaning “people of the craft,” was a designation for artisans, including poets. It is cognate with the Greek kerdos , meaning “craft, craftiness.” Two basic metaphors for the art of poetry in the classical world were carpentry and weaving. “Whatsoever else it may be,” W. H. Auden said, “a poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.”

The true poem has been crafted into a living entity. It has magical potency, ineffable spirit. There is always something mysterious and inexplicable in a poem. It is an act—an action—beyond paraphrase because what is said is always inseparable from the way it is being said. A poem creates an experience in the reader that cannot be reduced to anything else. Perhaps it exists in order to create that aesthetic experience. Octavio Paz maintained that the poet and the reader are two moments of a single reality.

Of the many ideas provided here in this definition, perhaps the one to emphasize most is that the poem is “an event in language.” It is also one of the harder to understand concepts. “A poem creates an experience in the reader that cannot be reduced to anything else,” writes Hirsch. Especially not through paraphrase. This means that in order to “experience” a poem, a reader needs to read it as it is. The poem is itself a type of virtual reality.

Jeremy Arnold, a professor of philosophy at the University of Woolamaloo in Canada, likens the poem to the “pensieve” device in the Harry Potter series: “A poem allows someone to preserve a mental experience so that an outsider can access it as if it were their own.” When coming to poetry, there may be nothing more important to understand because nothing can shape your perspective more on how to write and for what purpose. Poetry requires a reader, an audience; therefore, the poet must learn how to best engage an audience. And this engagement doesn’t happen by sharing ideas, feelings, or experiences, by telling the reader about your experiences — it happens by creating them on the page with words that evoke the senses. With images . These, then, are how the literary genres speak. Images are their muscles. Their heart. Images are poetry’s body and soul.

Choose a poem from the Poetry Foundation’s featured poems and look again at Edward Hirsh’s definition of poem. How does this poem typify his explanation? Are there any ways in which it does not? Write a short response (300 words or less) explaining how you see your selected poem in relation to Hirsch’s definition.

Video: Billy Collins, A Poet, Speaks Out

Watch Billy Collins’ audio/visual poem:

Video 6.1.1 : Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins

After watching the video above, read the poem here , and click on the link below to listen to a lecture by Billy Collins on his craft and how it relates to the reader.

Contributors and Attributions

Adapted from Naming the Unnameable: An Approach to Poetry for New Generations by Michelle Bonczek Evory, sourced from SUNY, CC-BY-NC-SA

A Summary and Analysis of Percy Shelley’s ‘A Defence of Poetry’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘A Defence of Poetry’ is an essay written by the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). One of the most important prose works of the Romantic era, and a valuable document concerning Shelley’s own poetic approach, the essay is deserving of closer analysis and engagement.

You can read Shelley’s ‘A Defence of Poetry’ here before proceeding to our summary and analysis of the essay below.

‘A Defence of Poetry’: summary

Shelley wrote ‘A Defence of Poetry’ in 1821 in response to an essay written by his friend, Thomas Love Peacock. In ‘The Four Ages of Poetry’, Peacock – now best-remembered for novels like Nightmare Abbey – wittily argued that poetry was surplus to requirements in the modern age, because scientific and technological discoveries had rendered it unnecessary.

We can get all the wonder we need from science. Arguing from a Utilitarian position, Peacock (with his tongue if not firmly in his cheek then certainly languidly resting against it) suggests that poetry is of less use to modern man than it was in previous ages.

Shelley intended his essay to be published in the follow-up issue of the Literary Miscellany , which had published Peacock’s essay that had prompted Shelley’s rebuttal. However, the Miscellany folded after its first issue, so Shelley’s essay was never printed in his lifetime – and it only appeared in print in 1840, eighteen years after Shelley’s death, when his widow, Mary Shelley, published it.

Shelley argues that poetry is mimetic: that is, it reflects the real world. In the early days of civilisation, men ‘imitate[d] natural objects’, observing the order and rhythm of these things, and from this impulse was poetry born. Reason and imagination are both important faculties in the poet.

Reason, he tells us, is logical thought, whereas imagination is perceiving things, and noticing the similarities between things (here, we might think of the poet’s stock-in-trade, the metaphor and simile, which liken one thing to another). It is through reason but also through imagination that we can identify beauty in the world, and from such a perception or realisation are great civilisations made. Poets, then, are the makers of civilisation itself, as Shelley argues:

But poets, or those who imagine and express this indestructible order, are not only the authors of language and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting: they are the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity with the beautiful and the true that partial apprehension of the agencies of the invisible world which is called religion.

The poet throughout history has been both legislator (law-maker) and prophet (religious messenger). And because poets work within the medium of language (unlike the sculptor or painter, who works in the visual medium), they have attained a greater degree of fame than other artists.

Shelley distinguishes between ‘measured’ and ‘unmeasured’ language, the former being poetry (which uses metre , i.e., you measure out the syllables per line) and the latter being prose. Poetry is superior to prose, even though both use language, because poetry also taps into the possibilities of sounds: ‘the language of poets has ever affected a certain uniform and harmonious recurrence of sound, without which it were not poetry, and which is scarcely less indispensable to the communication of its influence, than the words themselves, without reference to that peculiar order.’

Shelley also makes a distinction between storytelling (and, indeed, history) and poetry, arguing, ‘A story of particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts that which should be beautiful; poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.’ Poetry thus reflects the world, like a mirror, but does so in a way that renders the distorted image beautiful.

Indeed, poetry can make us see the world in a new light, making it richer and more beautiful:

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar; it reproduces all that it represents, and the impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward in the minds of those who have once contemplated them, as memorials of that gentle and exalted content which extends itself over all thoughts and actions with which it coexists.

The key to all of this, Shelley reiterates, is imagination.

Shelley devotes the next portion of ‘A Defence of Poetry’ to a sort of critical history of poetry from the days of ancient Greece up to the present, considering how, throughout the ages, poets have had a moral influence upon the world.

He argues that, following the Fall of Rome and the establishment of Christianity, it was poets who saved the world from ruin and anarchy: ‘the world would have fallen into utter anarchy and darkness, but that there were found poets among the authors of the Christian and chivalric systems of manners and religion, who created forms of opinion and action never before conceived; which, copied into the imaginations of men, became as generals to the bewildered armies of their thoughts.’

He sees the medieval poet Dante (1265-1321) as the ‘bridge’ between the ancient and modern world. Responding to Peacock, Shelley argues that the poet’s purpose is utilitarian, since poetry ‘lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world’, and has a moral purpose. Shelley concludes his essay with the rousing and famous words:

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

We have discussed this famous last line in more detail in a separate post .

‘A Defence of Poetry’: analysis

Shelley’s was not the first great defence of poetry as an art form, and probably the most notable precursor in English literature is Sir Philip Sidney’s ‘An Apology for Poetry’ , from the 1580s. But Shelley’s argument is more closely keyed into his own time, and emphasises some key aspects of Romanticism as a literary movement, and the importance of the poet as a figure in that movement.

Shelley’s central argument in ‘A Defence of Poetry’ is, at bottom, a moral one: poets enhance our sympathetic imaginations and thus poetry is a force for moral good. This is why, in that often-quoted final line, ‘poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world’: because poets have both the moral purpose and the imaginative faculties which help to make our world and its moral systems what they are.

As M. H. Abrams observed in his analysis of ‘A Defence of Poetry’, in his brilliant The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (Galaxy Books) , Shelley’s argument in ‘A Defence of Poetry’ is in some ways a Platonic one, concerned with ‘eternal Forms’; but crucially, whereas Plato had written of poets as the rivals of philosophers and statesmen as imitators of the natural world, Shelley collapses this rivalry and argues that great lawmakers and philosophers are poets.

Critics have often noticed that ‘A Defence of Poetry’ is a great essay on poetry in spite of what it leaves out: there is no detailed history of the development of poetry (Shelley’s whistle-stop tour of classical and medieval poets notwithstanding), nor is there any list of rules which good poets should follow.

Instead, Shelley’s argument is one which reflects many of the tenets of the Romantic movement: the idea of the poet as a visionary or prophet, the primacy of the imagination, and the ways in which the poet can change the world, becoming lawmaker, statesman, and philosopher all in one.

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Literature › Romantic Poetry

Romantic Poetry

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on February 16, 2021 • ( 0 )

The classic essays on romanticism tend not to define the term but to survey the manifold and unsuccessful attempts to define it. In English poetry, however, we can give a more or less historical definition: Romanticism is a movement that can be dated as beginning with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge ’s Lyrical Ballads of 1798 and that is still continuing today, despite reactions and countermovements which begin almost immediately and which are highly relevant to any consideration of Victorian and modern literature. (Although romanticism includes all of William Blake’s major poetry, beginning more than a decade prior to Lyrical Ballads, Blake’s obscurity limited his influence on other major writers for a good half century.)

Paradoxically, though, these reactions can themselves be regarded as highly romantic in nature— partly, perhaps, because one very general but still useful early (1825) definition of romanticism is, in the words of the French dramatist and politician Ludovic Vitet (1802–73), “Protestantism in arts and letters” (quoted in Furst, European Romanticism ). Protestantism was a protest against the fetters of the past (even romanticism itself)—against rule and convention, as Vitet realized—and therefore was also an analogue to the Protestant Reformation. In this sense, romanticism is the analogue in the literary sphere of the freedom brought by the Enlightenment in the political, moral, and philosophical world—according to Vitet, “the right to enjoy what gives pleasure, to be moved by what moves one, to admire what seems admirable, even when by virtue of well and duly consecrated principles it could be proved that one ought not to admire, nor be moved, nor enjoy.” Wordsworth, too, spoke of his object in Lyrical Ballads as giving pleasure to his readers, rather than conforming to rules: “There will also be found in these volumes little of what is usually called poetic diction . . . because the pleasure which I have proposed to myself to impart is of a kind very different from that which is supposed by many persons to be the proper object of poetry.” That pleasure is Protestant in its deference to the judgment and poetic conscience of the individual soul: “[T]his necessity of producing immediate pleasure . . . is an acknowledgment of the beauty of the universe, an acknowledgment the more sincere because it is not formal, but indirect; . . . it is a homage paid to the native and naked dignity of man, to the grand elementary principle of pleasure, by which he knows, and feels, and lives, and moves” (preface to Lyrical Ballads , 1800).

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, by Caspar David Friedrich, 1818

Romanticism is therefore to be defined negatively, perhaps, as a principled protest against classicism. Since the French were the earliest to identify it as a movement, we can recur to the incisive definition one of the great French romantics, Victor Hugo, who (in the preface to his 1830 play Hernani ) wrote, “Romanticism, so often badly defined, is . . . viewed wholly under its militant aspect, nothing but liberalism in literature . . . a literary liberty [which] is the daughter of political liberty.” The philosopher John Stuart Mill was one of the earliest purveyors of the term in English, but again he was describing French literature when he wrote in 1837:

The stateliness and conventional decorum of old French poetic and dramatic literature, gave place to a licence which made free scope for genius and also for absurdity, and let in new forms of the beautiful was well as many of the hideous. Literature shook off its chains, and used its liberty like a galley-slave broke loose; while painting and sculpture passed from one unnatural extreme to another, and the stiff school was succeeded by the spasmodic. This insurrection against the old traditions of classicism was called romanticism: and now, when the mass of rubbish to which it had given birth has produced another oscillation in opinion the reverse way, one inestimable result seems to have survived it—that life and human feeling may now, in France, be painted with as much liberty as they may be discussed, and, when painted truly, with approval.

Mill’s account shows the extent to which romanticism was central to Victorian literary attitudes, even as the heyday of what came to be called high romanticism came to an end in England with the beginning of the Victorian period. Indeed, the Victorian parody of the continued influence of romanticism identified what it called the “spasmodic school” of poetry.

These quotations show the extent to which romanticism is regarded as a revolutionary rejection of the past—of Mill’s classicism—which might be regarded as the literary equivalent of the French Revolution. Indeed, the first generation of English romantics were admirers of the French Revolution before its descent into destruction and terror. For this reason as well, the romantics saw Napoleon Bonaparte as a Promethean figure who promised liberty but ended up besotted with despotic power. Wordsworth, who celebrated the death of the French revolutionary Robespierre in The Prelude, nevertheless began that work with an ode to liberty. For the English romantics, that liberty was at once a break with Enlightenment rationalism and (as we have seen) a continuation of the Enlightenment’s intensely humanistic project of rejecting religious superstition and arbitrary law on behalf of the human soul’s freedom and primacy.

It is important not to make the mistake that some critics fall into of thinking of romanticism as essentially an irrational egotism. Romanticism is far more the inheritor of Enlightenment ideas than their displacer. It shares with the Enlightenment an intense focus on the powers of the human mind. For Enlightenment philosophers, that focus was often on its rational and analytic powers, whence the flowering of modern science. But such Enlightenment figures as the philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau paid equal or greater attention to the mind’s subjective experience. Rousseau’s Confessions (1769) as well as his novel Julie (1761) were forerunners of intense influences on (respectively) such works as Wordsworth’s The Prelude , Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage , and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s T he Triumph of Life . In Immanuel Kant and the German idealists, and in Coleridge, much of whose work is uncomfortably close to plagiarism of the idealists, the relationship between its objective and subjective powers is central to a philosophical account of the mind. Kant saw that relationship forming in the faculty of judgment, of which aesthetic judgment was the most vivid example. The half-creation, half-perception of the world which takes place in judgment is the theme of romanticism, explicitly in such poems as Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” and Shelley’s “Mont Blanc.” Sometimes the difference between subjective and objective attitudes manifested itself as a sense of self-division within the soul, a sense that could be traced back to the philosophy of John Locke (1632– 1704), which was repugnant but therefore powerfully influential, to such figures as Blake and Wordsworth.

Self-division, solitude, subjective longing—all of these are aspects of the subjectivity which romanticism took as its starting point and theme (in part inheriting it from the more sentimental mode of 18th-century sensibility, though sensibility was far more an overtly social phenomenon than romanticism). Because of its intense interest in subjectivity as well as its rejection of superstition, it is possible to see romanticism as a kind of religious sensibility without religious belief. The soul, or self, experiences itself as fallen in a fallen world (often represented as the world of childhood or the world most closely present in childhood). In Romanticism, by rejecting the doctrines of religion—that the biblical Fall is punishment for some derogation from a state of grace—the soul also rejects the consolations of religion; accordingly, it has no hope of salvation except within itself and its own experience. That salvation is therefore primarily aesthetic and philosophical (the distinction between the two is one of emphasis, which is why so many romantic poems are so intensely philosophical). The romantics took to heart Satan’s claim in John Milton’s great 17th-century work Paradise Lost (the poem most essential to the English romantics) that “The mind is its own place and in itself / Can make a Heaven of hell, a Hell of heaven (1, l. 254).” Our sense of ourselves as fallen, as having a destiny and home “with infinity,” as Wordsworth says, makes the finite world a negative measure of our own subjective intensity. When this intensity is represented as a claim to greatness of soul, it can look egotistical; but what counts is the intensity of experience measured by the failure as well as by the intermittent success of the outside world at matching it.

This intermittent success tends to come with a sense of the grandeur of nature, which is why so much great romantic poetry is about nature in its most intense aspects: those of beauty, solitude, and most of all, the sublime. Nature’s wildness, partly imaged in ruined castles and abbeys, which had been a staple of gothic fiction in the 18th century were particularly appropriate settings for romantic thought. But nature is itself a projection—it is the place the mind makes of it, as in the last two lines of Shelley’s “Mont Blanc,” where it is the human mind’s imaginings that transfigure vacancy into silence and solitude.

The general mode of a romantic poem is one of crisis—a crisis that leads to its own solution. The very fact of crisis is a sign that the intensity of feeling and thought at risk is still there. Romantic poets worry about the loss of intensity that seems the inevitable course of human experience, but they reimagine that loss of intensity as the intensity of loss. Loss becomes, as the 20th-century literary critic Paul de Man put it somewhat skeptically, “shadowed gain.” The gain for the soul is in its apprehension of its own capacity to measure its losses, and therefore to rise above them. Loss within the soul comes to be figured as the loss of poetic vocation. The poetry inspired by this loss is a sign that poetic vocation is intensified in its own undoing, rather than dissipated— for a while at least. Romanticism reimagined poetry as an intense analysis of human subjectivity, and in doing so it lent splendor to the universal human experience of loss and decline. What more can poetry do?

Bibliography Abrams, M. H. Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature. New York: Norton, 1973. Bloom, Harold. The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961. ———, ed. Romanticism and Consciousness: Essays in Criticism. New York: Norton, 1970. Brown, Marshall. Preromanticism. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991. Deane, Seamus. French Revolution and Enlightenment in England, 1789–1832. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988. De Man, Paul. The Rhetoric of Romanticism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. Furst, Lilian, ed. European Romanticism: Self-Definition: An Anthology. London: Methuen, 1980. Lovejoy, Arthur. “On the Discrimination of Romanticisms.” PMLA (journal of the Modern Language Association) 39, no. 2 (June 1924): 229–253. McGann, Jerome. The Romantic Ideology: A Critical Investigation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. Mill, John Stuart. “Armand Carrel.” In Dissertations and Discussions. Vol. 1. 237–308. Boston: Holt, 1882. Quinney, Laura. The Poetics of Disappointment: Wordsworth to Ashbery. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999.

Romanticism in England

Romanticism in France

Romanticism in America

Romantic Literary Criticism

Literary Criticism of William Wordsworth

Literary Criticism of S.T. Coleridge

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Poetry has a power to inspire change like no other art form

Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing, Cardiff Metropolitan University

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Culturally, poetry is used in varied ways. Haikus, for example, juxtapose images of the everyday, while lyric poetry expresses the personal and emotional. Similarly, poets themselves come in a range of guises. Think of the Romantic poet engaging with the sublime, the penniless artist in their garret, the high-brow don, the bard, the soldier on the frontline, the spoken word performer, the National Poet , the Poet Laureate or the Makar .

As an educator I sometimes encounter a fear of poetry in new students who have previously been put off by former teachers. Such teachers are, perhaps, intimidated by verse themselves, presenting it as a kind of algebra with an answer to be uncovered through some obscure metric code. This fear disperses, however, when students are given the confidence to interpret and engage with poetry on their own terms.

In creative writing classes we often talk about students needing to “find their own voice” and the best poems I read are written in the writers’ own particular voice, rather than in some inhabited “poetic” register. This is because poetry, for the writer and the reader, is about relevance.

Poetry is as relevant now as ever, whether you are a regular reader of it or not. Though chances are, at some point in your life, you will reach out to poetry. People look to poems, most often, at times of change. These can be happy or sad times, like birthdays, funerals or weddings. Poetry can provide clear expression of emotion at moments that are overwhelming and burdensome.

Markers of change

Poetry is also used to mark periods of change which are often celebrated through public events. In these instances the reading and writing of poetry can be transformative. At Remembrance Sunday, for example, verse is used to reflect upon and process the harsh realities of loss, as well as commemorate the military service of those who have passed.

In the wake of the shocking Manchester Arena bombing, Tony Walsh’s This is the Place gave the city a voice that was unifying, defiant and inspiring. It was important that Walsh is a Mancunian himself, just as David Jones fought in the trenches and at Mametz Wood which gives his In Parenthesis the weight of experience, while Holly McNish’s written experience in her book Nobody Told Me rings with the truth of a mother.

The communication of personal experiences like these in poetry, using direct and immediate terms, came to the fore with the early confessional poetry movement through poets like Robert Lowell , Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath . Their use of the personal and private as the basis for their poems was once considered shocking but is now an embedded part of the contemporary poetry world.

That is not to say that poetry can only communicate direct experiences, however. Some poems are spaces in which broad questions are grappled with and answers sought. For example, in Shakespeare’s The Tempest we are told death is a transformation rather than an end :

Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange

These comforting words can also be found on the grave of Percy Bysshe Shelley in Rome.

Looking forward

Poetry is also used to explore the potential for change in the future, carrying with it the fears or hopes of the poet. Take Interim by Lola Ridge for example, a poem which holds particular relevance at this time. Ridge was a prominent activist and an advocate of the working classes. In Interim, change is yet to happen. We encounter the moment before change, the build up to change, the pause to take stock, consider and prepare for what is next. In it she anticipates a future movement or event. At a time of political uncertainty, as Brexit is being wrangled with, when opinions on all sides appear fragmented rather than unified, I find Ridge’s words a particular comfort. She describes the world as:

A great bird resting in its flight Between the alleys of the stars.

This idea of the resting world is powerful. The world is waiting for its inhabitants to come to order perhaps, or to evolve even, before moving on to who knows where. But that is just me and my interpretation. Another reader will disagree and that is one of the most satisfying things about reading poetry. Your interpretation is yours alone and it can change the way you think or feel about something. It can help in times of challenge and it can bolster in periods of unease.

Today, poetry has never been more immediately accessible. With websites like The Poetry Archive and The Poetry Foundation one can summon a poem in the palm of one’s hand. Whether you are a regular reader of poetry or a person who encounters it only at moments of change, there is no denying the ongoing relevance and power of it.

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The Importance of Poetry

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Published: Mar 20, 2024

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Historical and cultural significance, emotional and psychological impact, educational and cognitive benefits, social and cultural connection.

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Guest Essay

Saying Goodbye to My Brilliant Friend, the Poetry Critic Helen Vendler

By Roger Rosenblatt

The author, most recently, of “Cataract Blues: Running the Keyboard.”

One makes so few new friends in older age — I mean, real friends, the ones you bond with and hold dear, as if you’d known one another since childhood.

Old age often prevents, or at least tempers, such discoveries. The joy of suddenly finding someone of compatible tastes, politics, intellectual interests and sense of humor can be shadowed, if tacitly, by the inevitable prospect of loss.

I became friends with Helen Vendler — the legendary poetry critic who died last week — six years ago, after she came to a talk I gave at Harvard about my 1965-66 Fulbright year in Ireland. Our friendship was close at the outset and was fortified and deepened by many letters between us, by our writing.

Some critics gain notice by something new they discover in the literature they examine. Helen became the most important critic of the age by dealing with something old and basic — the fact that great poetry was, well, lovable. Her vast knowledge of it was not like anyone else’s, and she embraced the poets she admired with informed exuberance.

The evening we met, Helen and I huddled together for an hour, maybe two, speaking of the great Celtic scholar John Kelleher, under whom we had both studied; of Irish poetry; and of our families. Helen was born to cruelly restrictive Irish Catholic parents who would not think of her going to anything but a Catholic college. When Helen rebelled against them, she was effectively tossed out and never allowed to return home.

She told me all this at our very first meeting. And I told her the sorrows of my own life — the untimely death of my daughter, Amy, and the seven-plus years my wife, Ginny, and I spent helping to rear her three children. And I told Helen unhappy things about my own upbringing. The loneliness. I think we both sensed that we had found someone we could trust with our lives.

I never asked Helen why she had come to my talk in the first place, though I had recognized her immediately. After spending a life with English and American poetry — especially the poetry of Wallace Stevens — how could I not? The alert tilt of her head, the two parenthetical lines around the mouth that always seemed on the verge of saying something meaningful and the sad-kind-wise eyes of the most significant literary figure since Edmund Wilson.

And unlike Wilson, Helen was never compelled to show off. She knew as much about American writing as Wilson, and, I believe, loved it more.

It was that, even more than the breadth and depth of her learning, that set her apart. She was a poet who didn’t write poetry, but felt it like a poet, and thus knew the art form to the core of her being. Her method of “close reading,” studying a poem intently word by word, was her way of writing it in reverse.

Weeks before Helen’s death and what would have been her 91st birthday, we exchanged letters. I had sent her an essay I’d just written on the beauty of wonder, stemming from the wonder so many people felt upon viewing the total solar eclipse earlier this month. I often sent Helen things I wrote. Some she liked less than others, and she was never shy to say so. She liked the essay on wonder, though she said she was never a wonderer herself, but a “hopeless pragmatist,” not subject to miracles, except upon two occasions. One was the birth of her son, David, whom she mentioned in letters often. She loved David deeply, and both were happy when she moved from epic Cambridge to lyrical Laguna Niguel, Calif., to be near him, as she grew infirm.

Her second miracle, coincidentally, occurred when Seamus Heaney drove her to see a solar eclipse at Tintern Abbey. There, among the Welsh ruins, Helen had an astonishing experience, one that she described to me in a way that seemed almost to evoke Wordsworth:

I had of course read descriptions of the phenomena of a total eclipse, but no words could equal the total-body/total landscape effect; the ceasing of bird song; the inexorability of the dimming to a crescent and then to a corona; the total silence; the gradual salience of the stars; the iciness of the silhouette of the towers; the looming terror of the steely eclipse of all of nature. Now that quelled utterly any purely “scientific” interest. One became pure animal, only animal, no “thought-process” being even conceivable.

One who claims not to know wonders shows herself to be one.

She was so intent on the beauty of the poets she understood so deeply, she never could see why others found her appreciations remarkable. Once, when I sent her a note complimenting her on a wonderfully original observation she’d made in a recent article, she wrote: “So kind of you to encourage me. I always feel that everything I say would be obvious to anyone who can read, so am always amazed when someone praises something.”

Only an innocent of the highest order would say such a beautiful, preposterous thing. When recently the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded her the Gold Medal for Belle Lettres and Criticism, Helen was shocked.

“You could have floored me when I got the call,” she wrote to me, adding: “Perhaps I was chosen by the committee because of my advanced age; if so, I can’t complain. The quote that came to mind was Lowell’s ‘My head grizzled with the years’ gold garbage.’”

She was always doing that — attaching a quotation from poetry to a thought or experience of her own, as if she occupied the same room as all the great poets, living with them as closely as loved ones in a tenement.

Shelley called poets the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.” I never fully got that famous line. But if the legislators’ laws apply to feeling and conduct, I think he was onto something. If one reads poetry — ancient and modern — as deeply as Helen did, and stays with it, and lets it roll around in one’s head, the effect is transporting. You find yourself in a better realm of feeling and language. And nothing of the noisier outer world — not Donald Trump, not Taylor Swift — can get to you.

In our last exchange of letters, Helen told me about the death she was arranging for herself. I was brokenhearted to realize that I was losing someone who had given me and countless others so much thought and joy. Her last words to me were telling, though, and settled the matter as only practical, spiritual Helen could:

I feel not a whit sad at the fact of death, but massively sad at leaving friends behind, among whom you count dearly. I have always known what my true feelings are by whatever line of poetry rises unbidden to my mind on any occasion; to my genuine happiness, this time was a line from Herbert’s “Evensong,” in which God (always in Herbert, more like Jesus than Jehovah), says to the poet, “Henceforth repose; your work is done.”

She closed her letter as I closed my response. “Love and farewell.”

Roger Rosenblatt is the author, most recently, of “Cataract Blues: Running the Keyboard.”

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Competitive Prize Contests 2025

The Lipson Program George Morey Richardson Latin Translation Prize Philo Sherman Bennett Prize in Political Science Owen D. Young Prize in International Relations Thomas G. Rosenmeyer Greek Translation Prize Dorothy Rosenberg Memorial Prize in Lyric Poetry Elizabeth Mills Crothers Prize in Literary Composition Emily Chamberlain Cook Prize in Poetry Roselyn Schneider Eisner Prizes Florence Mason Palmer Prize Ina Coolbirth Memorial Poetry Prize Lili Fabilli and Eric Hoffer Essay Prize Nicola de Lorenzo Prize in Music Composition Anne and Benjamin Goor Prize in Jewish Studies

The Prizes Program at UC Berkeley ( [email protected] ) is an important forum for rewarding creative expression and scholarly achievement by Berkeley’s finest students. Winners receive both recognition and a cash prize, which is coordinated with the winner’s financial aid package.

Below you will find all of Berkeley’s Prize contests. Please note the criteria of each contest before entering.

Note: Prize contest entries need to be submitted, via our online submission form before 4 p.m. on the contest deadline (listed on the chart below). See the General Rules for Competitive Prizes for complete submission information. Please click on the contest names below for specific details about each prize.

The Lipson Program

The Leslie Lipson Program at UC Berkeley is intended to encourage undergraduate students to study humanistic values and their practical application for individuals, societies, and states.

The program consists of the Lipson Essay Prize, the Lipson Scholarship, and the Lipson Research Grant.

Leslie Lipson Biography. The Leslie Lipson Program is endowed in memory of Professor Leslie Lipson, who taught political theory and comparative government at Berkeley for 33 years. As a professor, Lipson’s first love was the undergraduate curriculum, and undergraduate students twice selected him as the best teacher in the Department of Political Science. Berkeley honored Lipson in 1980 with the Berkeley Citation, for individuals of extraordinary achievement in their field who have given outstanding service to the campus. Lipson’s books include The Great Issues of Politics, which has been published in ten editions, translated into numerous foreign languages, and used in introductory political science courses across the country; and his seminal work, The Ethical Crises of Civilization, in which he analyzed the historical developments in world civilizations that have resulted in both better and worse ethical choices. “Humanistic values are the fundamental values of good and evil, right and wrong, just and unjust, as carried out by individuals and societies in service of or against humanity” (Leslie Lipson).

Lipson Essay Prize

The Leslie Lipson Scholarship and Prize Fund (“the Fund’) will assist deserving financially needy undergraduate students enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, and is open to students  regardless of race, color, national origin, or religion.  The Fund is dedicated to educating outstanding undergraduate students in humanistic values and to provide the means to conduct research concerning those values.

All recipients of Leslie Lipson Prize, Scholarship and Research Awards will be known as Leslie Lipson Scholars. Lipson Prize winners will receive a scholarship only if they are scholarship eligible and demonstrate financial need as determined by the Financial Aid Office. The Fund will provide all or a portion of their need-based scholarship. Recipients of the scholarship may also be eligible for the Research Award to conduct research during the summer between their scholarship terms.

Candidates shall apply at the end of the fall semester of their freshman or sophomore years, and recipients will be selected by the end of the spring semester of the year in which they apply. 

Successful candidates are awarded the Lipson Prize in spring and Lipson Scholarships will be awarded for their sophomore through senior years for those who apply as freshmen, and for the junior and senior years for those who apply as sophomores.

Eligibility

To be eligible for the Lipson Essay Prize, students need to be eligible freshmen or sophomores and have a minimum 3.0 grade-point average (GPA). Students from any field of study are welcome to apply. Essays will be reviewed by the Lipson Committee, and the committee may award prizes for all Scholarship Winners.

Submissions need to be submitted via our online submission form by January 17th, 2025  at 4 PM.

2023-2024 Lipson Scholarship Program Essay Topics

Please choose one topic.

• Currently it is often said that democracy in America is at a crossroads, in terms of its very ability to exist. Do you agree or disagree? What are the causes of such a disintegration, if indeed that is occurring?
• As famously stated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “You are entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts .” Has “red” and “blue” tribalism in current American culture now made it difficult, or even impossible, for people of different parties and persuasions to agree on what is reality or what is “true”?
• Is America in danger of becoming an authoritarian state? Are American democratic institutions, as embodied by our three branches of government, strong enough to defeat peaceably an armed threat of civil war?
•  What response to terrorism is consistent with and upholds humanistic values?
• Should there be any limits on political speech at universities? If you believe there should be limits, what would those be and how would they be enforced?
• Explain the persistence of anti-semitism over the centuries and why there is a resurgence today.

Prize Amounts

A prize of $10,000 is awarded to students who submit winning essays on one of six topics related to humanistic values.

• Essays shorter or longer than the recommended amount will not be disadvantaged by sole virtue of their length
• 12-point font; double-spaced with one-inch margins; numbered pages
• Last 4 digits of your student identification (SID) number in top-right corner of every page
• You may submit only one essay per calendar year
• Your submissions need to be anonymous; please do not include your name

Please submit via our online submission form.

Competitive Prizes Online Submission

2023-24: Victoria Fan, "The Center Will Not Hold: The State of Democracy"; Sophia Martinez, "How Echo Chambers and Algorithms Have Led Americans Away from a Universal Truth"; Zoe Lodge, "Sense and Desensitivity: Polarization is Destroying the Fabric of American Political Culture"; Carmen Berry, "When Feelings Become Fact: Climate Change Denialism as a Symptom of Political Mistrust"; Grace Camperi, "In the Cave of Political Tribalism"; Connor Eubank,  "State of Terror: The Ethical Cost of Legitimizing State Terrorism"; Alex Lewis Richter, " Countering Forever Wars: A Framework for Just & Unjust Counterterrorism Operations"; Alkis Loannis Toutziaridis,  "Rights and Resistance: The Dual Front in Counter-Terrorism Strategy"; Viraj Roy Gupta, "Untangling the Hydra: Combatting the Many Faces of Anti-Semitism"; Guanjie Cheng, "A Historical Journey Through the Persistence of Anti-Semitism”; Chloe Sabrina Zitsow, " Money, Money, Money: How the Myth of Jews and Finances Drives Antisemitism"

2022-23: Peyton Koch, "The Democracy Camel:  Has the Final Straw"; Irina Velitskaya, "The Consequences Are Clear: Social Media and the History of Human Innovation"; Agodi Okoroafor, "What do the Wealthiest 1% owe the 99%?"; Julia Gignac, "From Imperfect Progress by Unsatisfying Compromise"; Hy Nguyen, " An Invisible Hand plaguing our economy: The economics behind the Medical-Industrial Complex"; Ashley Kim, "BeReal… Let’s Be Real"; Keshwanth Babu Puligulla, "Agree to Disagree: An Examination of Political and Cultural Polarization"

2021-22:  Madeleine (Maddi) Wong, "America MMXXII: The Return of Democracy- An Attack on De Jure and De Facto Democracy through the Jeopardization of Civil Rights"; Margaux Bauerlein,"Social Trust and Negative Liberty: Free to Be Me (and Suffer for It)"

2020–21: Stephan Dai, "Lies and Internet Posts, Evidence that Brandenburg’s Toast?"; Aleeza Adnan, Alxander Fung, Emma Gerson, Valmic Muking, "Culture Warn’t: The Imaginary War the 1% Wants us to Fight"; Vyoma Raman, Deborah Le-En Tan

2019–20: Evan Juan, "The Obligation of a Human Right to Health"; Aditya Varma, "American E(conomics) X(clusion) C(hurch) E(xpansion) P(rogress) T(echnology)-ionalism"; Max Zhang, "Sleeping at the Wheel"

2018–19: Hannah Herrick, "The Persistence of Racism through Colorblindness"; Vedant Kajaria, "A Consummate Relationship with Anarchy"; Karen Lee, "Condemned to Condemn"; Tara Madhav "American Democracy, Racism and the State of Exception"; Kathleen Navas, "Psychological Basis and Modern Impact of Racism on Society"; Wyatt Singh, "The Second Coming: A Century Later, W.B. Yeats' Words Are Still Relevant"; Sharon Marie Vaz, "Yeats' Spiritus Mundi and its Relevance to 2019"; Leo Zlimen, "Our Own Phantom World"

2017–18: David Olin, "The Spirit and the Machine", Nicholas Pingitore, "Wandering with Walden", Evan Schwartz, "Arguments for Disobeying Trump's order for a Preemptive Nuclear Strike: Echoes from the Nuremberg Tribunal", Talia Wenger, "How Artificial Intelligence Re-Ignites the Human Spirit"

2016–17: Alexander Casendio, "Is democracy in general, as a form of government, currently broken on an international basis?"; Daniel Rosenthal,"What are the reasons for the cultural and political polarizations in the U.S. and what is its impact on humanistic values. Is this only a national trend, or is it an issue internationally?"; Thomas Lee Kadie,"The Licensing of Right-Wing Populism"

2015–16: 1st prize: Liya Nahusenay, "Islamophobia: A Detrimental Misnomer"; Neel Somani, "Contemporary Stereotyping: Exploring the Seduction of Bias"; 2nd prize: Nina Djukic, "A Rare Drought Rain"; Suleman Khan, "The Government That Cried Wolf: Refugees and National Security"; Olivia Maigret. "The Complicity of Religion in Terrorism"

2014–15: Carter Bryce Keeling, "The People's Climate March"; Ismael Farooqui, "The Invisible Hand: The results of wealth accumulation in a democracy"; Joprdan Hyatt-Miller, "The Logic of Violence"; James Rosenberg, "Legal Accountability for Torture: Preserving a Nation of Rights and Values"; Zijing Song, "One Oligarchy, Under God"

2013–14: Elizabeth Carroll, "A Nation of Suspects: Modern Surveillance and the Right to Privacy"; Wenyan He, "The Bilateral Nature of Ethics in Economic Inequality"; Taylor Madigan, "A Rawlsian Approach to Economic Inequality"; Sharada Narayan, "The Politics of Political Ethics"; Zijing Song, "The State of Obama's Union"

2012–13: Pierre Bourbonnais, "No Excuses for Lying"; Apruva Govande, "Emotional Bridges through Empathy"; Adithyavairavan Murali, "War on Terror: The Great Game of Education, Economics and Human Dignity"; Seth Victor, "The Lies and Unethical Nature of the War on Terror"

2011–12: Adam Susaneck, "How Party Stratification Leads to Duopoly as Ideology Establishing Elections as a Script Creating Not Deadlock, Livelock!"

2010–11: Ayden Parish, "Fundamentalism, Church and State"; Timothy Borjian, "The Problems with American Exceptionalism"

2009–10: Jasmine L. Segall, "Ethical Implications of Anonymous Methods of Modern Warfare"; Spreeha Debchaudhury, "We the People: A Colorful Portrayal"

2008–09: Alexander Setzepfandt, "Optimism: Breaking Free from the Unethical Behavior of Others"; Anirudh Narla, "The Triumph of Grey: The Importance of Indeterminacy and Complexity in Black and White"

2007–08: Danielle Rathje, "Fair Trade and Global Responsibility"; Keith Browner Brown, "Factoring in Humanity: The Failure of Population Control"

2006–07: Andrina Tran, "Varieties of Morality: William James, Pragmatism and Freedom "

2005–06: Erica Mu, "Dismantling Torture: An Examination of the United States at a Political and Ethical Crossroads"; Jillian Marks, "Torture: An Analysis of Its Evils"; Alexander H. Lau, "Revealing Racial Bias: A Case for Affirmative Action"

2004–05: Jacqueline Nader "The Greatest Danger of Our Time"; Yanpei Chen, "Morality and Political Discourse"; Charles Lin, "Avoiding a Tragedy: Reconciling International Interests in the Atmospheric Commons"

2003–04: No award given

2002–03: Jennifer Greenburg, "Women's Participation in Post-Apartheid Reform"; Sebastian Petty, "Back to the Land: Institutional Forms of Community Supported Agriculture"; Tina Sang, "Chinese Household Registration System"

2001–02: Susan Tche, "Effects of the New World Economy on Post-Embargo Vietnam"

2000–01: Cynthia Houng, "Sustainable Development? Towards a New Synthesis of Environment Ethics and Philosophy"; Joseph Kim, "Does Absentee Voting Have Anti-Social Effects on Voters?"; Pha Lo, "The Hmong of Laos: Cultural Perspectives on Implementing a Global Agenda"

Lipson Scholarship

The Lipson Scholarship, established in 2001, is a need-based scholarship awarded up to a scholar’s full financial need per year and is only available to eligible students who submit winning essays for the Lipson Essay Prize.

To receive the Lipson Scholarship, students must win the Lipson Essay Prize and be a freshman or sophomore when they apply. The Lipson Scholarship will fund the costs of the scholars’ sophomore through senior years at UC Berkeley for those who apply as freshmen, and the costs of the scholars’ junior and senior years for those who apply as sophomores, based on their financial need as determined by the Financial Aid and Scholarships Office. 

Lipson Research Grant

The third component of the Lipson Program, which is optional, is the Lipson Research Grant (established in 2001).

Lipson Scholars who wish to do research in greater depth have the opportunity to apply for funds to support their own original research project. Scholars will undertake such projects during the summer. Scholars selected for the Lipson Research Grant will receive a $5,000 stipend for summer living expenses so that they may devote their time to their summer research project; an additional $250 will be awarded in the fall semester after the scholar submits a paper about his or her summer project. Lipson Research Grant recipients may decide to develop the paper further into an honors thesis, or even a graduate-level dissertation. Projects must relate to humanistic values and their implementation, and might, for example, address such topics as human rights issues, bio-ethics, the impact on developing societies of global capitalism, or environmental concerns in the 21st century. Students will receive further details about this research opportunity following their selection as Lipson Scholars. While the Lipson Research Grant is optional, it is an important part of the Lipson Program.

• Previous Research Projects add Summer 2012 Ayden Parish: Prototype Theory and the Categorization of Autism Jasmine Segall: Microfinance: Interest Rates and Social Performance in the United States and Guatemala

– Top –

George Morey Richardson Latin Translation Prize

The Richardson Latin Translation Prize is open to all UC Berkeley students. A first-place prize and second-place prize are awarded for the best translation of classical English into Ciceronian Latin.

History of the Prize: The Richardson Latin Translation Prize was established through the will of George Morey Richardson of Berkeley, dated May 16, 1896: “I give and devise to The Regents of the University of California, two lots or parcels of land, situated in Highland Trust, Oakland Township, Alameda County, State of California, to expend the income there or from the proceeds thereof, when sold, for an annual prize known as the ‘Richardson Latin Translation Prize,’ to be awarded to undergraduates (later to include graduate students) of the University of California for the best translation of classical English into Ciceronian Latin.” The prize was established in 1896.

Please review the General Rules for Competitive Prizes .

Contest deadline is January 17th, 2025  at 4 PM.

2023-2024 George Morey Richardson Latin Translation English Passage

2023–24: No award given

2022–23: Claire Healy ($2,000)

2021–22: No award given

2020–21: 1st prize: Joshua Benjamins ($1,900)

2019–20: 1st prize: Daniel Squire ($1,000); 2nd prize: Joshua Benjamins ($800)

2018–19: 1st prize: Daniel Squire ($1,000); 2nd prize: Joshua Benjamin ($500)

2017–18: 1st prize: Daniel Squire ($1,500)

2016–17: 1st prize: Daniel Squire ($1,400)

2015–16: 1st prize: Michael Zellmann-Rohrer ($1,000); 2nd prize: Daniel Squire ($400)

2014–15: 1st prize: Michael Zellman-Rohrer ($1,000); 2nd prize: Tom Recht ($500)

2013–14: 1st prize: Michael Zellmann-Rohrer ($1,500)

2012–13: 1st prize: Jared Hudson and Michael Zellman-Rohrer ($750 each)

2011–12: 1st prize: Michael Zellman–Rohrer ($2,000)

2010–11: 1st prize: Jared Hudson ($1,500); 2nd prize: Thomas Hendrickson ($500)

2009–10: 1st prize: Jared Hudson ($2,000)

2008–09: 1st prize: Jared Hudson ($1,500); 2nd prize: Antonia Pham Young ($500)

2007–08: 1st prize: Jared Hudson and Boris Rodin ($1,000 each)

2006–07: 1st prize: Jared Hudson ($2,000)

2005–06: 1st prize: Wilson Shearin ($1,500); 2nd prize: Kurt Lampe ($500)

2004–05: 1st prize: Kurt Lampe ($2,000)

2003–04: 1st prize: William Michal Short ($1,500); 2nd prize: J. C. Geissmann ($500)

2002–03: 1st prize:William Short ($2,000) 2001–02: 1st prize: Jon Christopher Geissmann ($1,000)

2000–01: 1st prize: Dylan Sailor ($1,000)

1999–00: 1st prize: Dylan Sailor ($1,000); 2nd prize: Amir Baghdadchi ($500)

1998–99: 1st prize: Dylan Sailor ($500)

1997–98: 1st prize: Dylan Sailor ($500)

Philo Sherman Bennett Prize in Political Science

The Philo Sherman Bennett Prize in Political Science is awarded for the best essay encompassing some aspect of politics other than international relations.

The prize is open to both graduates and undergraduates.

History of the Prize: Philo Sherman Bennett’s 1905 will stated: “I give and bequeath to Wm. J. Bryan of Lincoln the sum of ten thousand dollars ($10,000.00), in trust, however, to pay to twenty-five colleges or universities, to be selected by him, the sum of four hundred ($400.00) each, said sum of four hundred dollars ($400.00) to be invested by each college receiving the same and the annual proceeds used for a prize for the best essay discussing the principal of free government.” The Regents Minutes of August 8, 1905 recite the following: “Mr. Wm. Jennings Bryan informed the University that he was glad to leave the decision by the college authorities the details of the Bennett Essay Prize…”

Contest deadline is December 13th , 2024  at 4 PM.

2023–24: Alyssa Rene Heinze and Eero Samuel Arum ($1,500 each)

2022–23: Teoman Tecan ($2,500)

2021–22: Kristin Zuhone ($1,000)

2020–21:  Joseph Rodriquez and Shterna Friedman ($2,500 each) 

2019–20: Shterna Friedman and Julia Goddard ($2250 each)

2018–19: Shterna Friedman ($4500)

2017–18: Kristin Zuhone ($1000)

2016–17: No prize awarded

2015–16: Jeremy Cynamon ($1,000)

2014–15: Jeremy Cynamon ($1,000)

2013–14: Samuel Garrett Zeitlin ($1,000)

2012–13: Samuel Garrett Zeitlin ($1,000)

2011–12: Jeremy Pilaar ($1,000)

2010–11: Sang-Hwa Sara Lee and Alyssa Beltran ($500 each)

2009–10: Huan Gao and Mikhail Guttentag ($500 each)

2008–09: Daniel Katz ($1,000)

2007–08: Daniel Katz ($1,000 )

2006–07: Nan Zhang ($1,000)

2005–06: Caitlin Rose Fox-Hodess ($1,000)

2004–05: Caitlin Rose Fox-Hodess ($1,000)

2002–03: No award given

2001–02: Anthony Chen ($1,000)

2000–01: Tony Chen ($2,000)

1999–00: Robert S. Taylor ($1,500)

1998–99: Daniel Ho ($1,000)

1997–98: James Abrams ($1,000)

Owen D. Young Prize in International Relations

The Owen D. Young Prize in International Relations is awarded for the best essay dealing with some aspect of international relations.

A minimum of 4,000 words is required with a maximum word limit of 5,000 words. Open to undergraduates only.

History of the Prize: From the Regents’ Minutes of October 10, 1933: “Mr. Owen D. Young delivered the Charter Day Address in Berkeley on March 24, 1930, returned to the Regents his honorarium as such speaker and in addition donated the sum of $250. This was intended to be used for three prizes … to undergraduate students registered in the colleges at Berkeley … who offered the best three essays on the topic, ‘What can a college student do to further good understanding among the nations and thereby promote peace?’ Mr. Young, on June 2, 1931, [amended] the conditions of this … contest, [whereby] the remainder of his donation, to wit, $900, be set up as a permanent fund, the income therefrom to be devoted to an annual prize for the best essay on some aspect of international relations. The Committee on Prizes is authorized to change the topic of the essay from time to time as they may see fit to do so.” The Owen D. Young Prize was established in 1958.

2022–23: Caitlin Barotz ($800)

2021–22: Dil Sen ($1,400)

2 020–21: Francis (Siyuan) Chen and Kaitlyn Lombardo ($600 each)

2019–20: Rosemary Yin ($1,500)

2018–19: Will Alexander and Kevin Klyman ($700 each)

2017–18: 1st prize: Sarah O'Farrell ($700); 2nd prize: Justin DesRochers and Janani Mohan ($350 each)

2016–17: Suleman Khan ($1,000)

2015–16: Madison Chapman and William Michael Morrow ($750 each)

2014–15: Cameron Silverberg ($1,500)

2013–14: Caroline McCloskey ($1,500)

2012–13: Michelle Chern ($1,500)

2011–12: Maya Yizhaky ($1,500)

2010–11: Lauren Benichou ($1,500)

2009–10: Kenneth Tsang ($1,500)

2008–09: Timothy Barry ($1,500)

2007–08: No award given

2006–07: Ben Narodick ($1,200)

2005–06: Helen Hsueh ($1,200)

2004–05: No award given

2003–04: Miya Keren ($500)

2002–03: Jeff Lindemyer ($500)

2001–02: Albert Ofrecio ($500)

2000–01: No award given

1999–00: Daniel Ho ($500)

1998–99: Christopher Maier ($500)

1997–98: No entries received

Thomas G. Rosenmeyer Greek Translation Prize

The Thomas G. Rosenmeyer Greek Translation Prize is awarded to a graduate or undergraduate for the best translation of classical English into an appropriate classical Greek style.

Appropriate styles include those of Plato and of the classical Attic orators, but other styles appropriate to the content are not excluded, such as the style of Herodotus, or even verse composition. The selection will normally be formal English prose and will be 350 to 500 words in length.

History of the Prize: The Rosenmeyer Prize was established in 1995.

2023-2024 Thomas G. Rosenmeyer Greek Translation English Passage

2022–23: No award given

2021–22:  No award given

2020–21: Joshua Benjamins ($750)

2019–20: Joshua Benjamins and Daniel Squire ($1,500 each)

2018–19: Daniel Squire ($2,500)

2017–18: Daniel Squire ($1,000)

2016–17: Daniel Squire ($1,400)

2015–16: Michael Zellmann-Rohrer ($1,000)

2014–15: 1st prize: Tom Recht ($750); 2nd prize: Michael Zellman-Rohrer ($250)

2013–14: Tom Recht and Michael Zellmann-Rohrer ($500 each)

2012–13: Tom Recht and Michael Zellmann-Rohrer ($500 each)

2011–12: Tom Recht ($700); Michael Zellmann-Rohrer ($300)

2010–11: Tom Recht and Michael Zellmann-Rohrer ($500 each)

2009–10: Tom Recht ($1,000)

2008–09: Boris Rodin ($750); Honorable Mention: Joel Street ($250)

2007–08: Nardini Pandey ($500)

2006–07: Boris Rodin Maslov ($500)

2005–06: Boris Rodin Maslov ($500)

2004–05: Boris Rodin ($500)

2003–04: William Michael Short ($500)

2002–03: Jon Christopher Geissmann ($500)

2001–02: W. H. Shearin ($500)

2000–01: Dylan Sailor ($500)

1999–00: Dylan Sailor ($500)

1998–99: Dylan Sailor ($500)

1997–98: Dylan Sailor ($500)

Dorothy Rosenberg Memorial Prize in Lyric Poetry

The Dorothy Rosenberg Memorial Prize in Lyric Poetry will be awarded for composition of the best original unpublished lyric poem. Each entrant may submit only one poem; the length should not exceed thirty lines. A lyric poem is a poem that sings. It is usually quite short. When the poem is read aloud, it should inspire and delight by its heartfelt thought and feeling and the beauty of its language.

History of the Prize

When Dorothy Rosenberg died, her husband, Professor Marvin Rosenberg, established a fund to award this prize in her name.

Contest deadline is December 13th , 2024

2023-24: Noah Warren, William James Davidson and Mary Mussman ($1,000 each)

2022-23: Emily Peng, Landon Kramer ($1,500 each)

2021-22: Mary Mussman ($1,500), Annabelle Lampson ($1,000) and John James ($1,000)

2020-21: Mary Wilson($2,000), John James ($1,500) and Mary Mussman ($1,200)

2019–20: Yujane Chen and Aurelia Cojocaru ($3000)

2018–19: Lydia Liu ($3000)

2017–18: Selden Cummings, Nina Djukic, Anthony Tucci-Berube, Claire Marie Stancek, Jennifer Lorden ($1040)

2016–17: Julie Lee, Kaisle Hill, Brianna Alleyne, Katrina Hall, undergraduate winners; Evan Klavon, graduate winner ($840 each)

2015–16: Alani Hicks-Bartlett ($1,000); Evan Bauer, Raj Bhargava, Ismael Farooqui, Carter Bryce Keeling, and Alan Xu ($800 each)

2014–15: Christopher Miller and Mary Wilson, graduate winners ($1,000 each); Lillian Berger, Andrew David King, and S. Carlota Salvador Megias, undergraduate winners ($1,000 each)

2013–14: Jane Gregory, graduate winner ($2,000); Andrew David King, undergraduate winner ($2,000)

2012–13: Rachel Trocchio, graduate winner ($850); Laura Ferris, Andrew David King, Larry Narron, and Claire Tuna, undergraduate winners ($850 each)

2011–12: Samuel Garrett Zeitlin, graduate winner ($2,400); Bryce Thronburg, undergraduate winner ($2,400)

2010–11: Jane Gregory, graduate winner ($1,600); Taylor Hickok and Kayla Krut, undergraduate winners ($1,600 each)

2009–10: Gillian Osborne, graduate winner ($1,000); 1st prize, undergraduate: Anna Reeser ($2,000), 2nd prize, undergraduate: Steven Lance ($1,500), 3rd prize, undergraduate: Emma Tome ($1,000), Honorable Mention: Teresa Jimenez ($500)

2008–09: Matthew Melnicki and Alani Hicks-Bartlett graduate winners ($2,000 each); 1st prize, undergraduate: Steven Lance ($2,000); Honorable Mention: Joe Cadora ($1,000)

2007–08: Kate Klonowski and Matthew Melnicki ($2,000 each)

2006–07: Colin Dingler, graduate winner ($2,000); James May, undergraduate winner ($2,000); Honorable Mention: Marisa Libbon

2005–06: Michael Nicholson and Elizabeth Young ($1,000 each); Honorable Mention: Diana Y. Chien

2004–05: Edgar Garcia ($500)

2003–04: Edgar Garcia ($200)

2002–03: Michael Heinrich ($200)

2001–02: Lily Dwyer ($100)

2000–01: Emily Beall ($100)

1999–00: Mandy Kahn ($100)

1998–99: Caetlin Benson-Allott ($100)

1997–98: Kimberly Johnson ($100)

Elizabeth Mills Crothers Prize in Literary Composition

The Elizabeth Mills Crothers Prize in Literary Composition is awarded for excellence of composition in poetry, story writing, drama, or another field of literary composition. Judging is based on excellence of composition. Open to all graduate and undergraduate students.

This fund was accepted by the Regents on August 13, 1929. The Corpus thereof, in the amount of $3,000, was, by Judge George E. Crothers, pursuant to an agreement dated October 13, 1921, between Judge Crothers and the late Maria Elizabeth Mills, transferred to Mrs. Mills for the support of a fellowship in music in Mills College. This agreement provided that upon the death of Mrs. Mills the fund should pass to the Regents to support the Elizabeth Mills Crothers Prize in Literary Composition at the University of California.

2023-24: Aleeza Adnan ($1,200), Ayesha Asad, Mina Choi and Maisie Wiltshire-Gordon ($600 each)

2022-22: Nina Djukic ($1,500), Sophia Egert-Smith, Mary Mussman ($750 each)

2021-22: Drew Kiser ($1,000); Ryan Lackey ($500)

2020–21: Jennifer Tamayo ($900); Ryan Lackey, Noah Warren, Nessa Ordukhani, Mary Mussman ($500 each)

2019–20: Lucy Eaton ($1,000); Mary Mussman, Noah Warren, Sabrina Jaszi ($650 each)

2018–19: Clara Jimenez, Mary Mussman, Tessa Rissacher, Noah Warren ($750 each)

2017–18: 1st Prize: Mary Wilson ($2000); 2nd Prize: Evan Bauer, Selden Cummings, Nina Djukic, Zachary Kiebach($800 each)

2016–17: 1st prize: Rosetta Young ($600); 2nd prize: Jesslyn Whittell ($400); 3rd prize: Shelby Gregg ($300); Finalists: Sheryl Barbera and Khamillah Zimmer ($250 each); Honorable Mention: Mary Wilson, Laura Ferris, Hannah Ling, Julia Apffel, Evan Bauer, Sean Dennison, and Balark Mallik ($100 each)

2015–16: 1st prize: Carter Bryce Keeling ($2,000); 2nd prize: Claire Marie Stancek ($1,000); 3rd prize: Rachel King ($1,000); Finalists: Roxanne Forbes, Griffin Morin-Tornheim, Leah Tyus, and Anthony Williams ($250 each)

2014–15: 1st prize: Andrew David ($2,500); 2nd prize: Stanford Shoor ($500); 3rd prize: Rachel Trocchio ($500); 4th prize: Mary Wilson ($500)

2013–14: 1st prize: Ismail Muhammad ($1,500); 2nd prize: Manjing Zhang ($1,000); 3rd prize: Jessica Cox ($750); 4th prize: Tara Fatemi ($500); 5th prize: Michael A. Shaw ($250)

2012–13: Allison Berke, Cora Bernard, Myles Parker Osborne, Kayla Krut, and Eli Wirtschafter ($800 each)

2011–12: 1st prize: Gabriel Thibodeau ($1,500); 2nd prize: Kayla Krut ($1,000); 3rd prize: Yi (Jenny) Xie and Zoe Pollak ($750 each)

2010–11: Kelsa Trom and Tom Recht ($150 each)

2009–10: Faith Gardner, Angelene Smith, David Krolikoski, and Natalie Tsang ($800 each)

2008–09: Mia You ($600); Angelene Smith, Jennifer Reimer, Thomas Gamburg and Natalie Tsang ($350 each)

2007–08: Joseph Cadora, Jude Dizon, Adrienne Johnson and Nalini Rae G Sareen ($250 each)

2006–07: Martine Charnow, Zachary Tomaszewski, and Sara Lahue ($300 each)

2005–06: Geoffrey Greer ($500); Joseph Scalici, Jacqueline Palhegy, Keleigh Friedrich, Trevor Adrian, Emi Ikkanda ($150 each)

2004–05: Jacqueline Palhegy ($500); Leslie MacMillan, Erica Kidder Jensen and Edgar Garcia ($150 each)

2003–04: 1st prize: Bernice Santiago and Katherine Willett ($350 each); 2nd prize: Brandelyn Castine ($200); 3rd prize: Roger Porter ($100)

2002–03: Winners for poetry: Ellen Samuels ($250), Rachel Teukolsky ($175), Laura Wetherington ($175); Winners for Prose: James Ramey ($250), Maria Elena Howard ($150)

2001–02: Jennifer Hasa and Soyoung Jung ($1,000 each)

2000–01: Jennifer Ahn and Karen Lee ($1,000 each)

1999–00: 1st prize: Azin Arefi-Anbarani and Matthew Gleeson ($900 each)

1998–99: 1st prize: Bruce Maritano, Benjamin Russack, Caleb Smith, Frank B. Wilderson III, and Lin Zou ($300 each)

1997–98: 1st prize: Jennifer Stroud ($500); 2nd prize: Asali Solomon ($300); 3rd prize: Bryce Maritano ($200); runner-up: Michael Holt and Yuval Sharon ($100 each)

1996–97: 1st prize: Caleb Smith ($400); 2nd prize: Anh Bui ($200); 3rd prize: Asali Solomon and Julia Cho ($175 each); 4th prize: Ola Metwally ($150)

1995–96: 1st prize: Judy Kemelman ($300); 2nd prize: Amy Graff and Karin Spirn ($250 each); 3rd prize: Viet Nguyen and Hamilton Tran ($200 each); 4th prize: Philip Huynh and Bryan Malessa ($150 each)

1994–95: 1st prize: Cynthia Lin ($500); 2nd prize: Elizabeth Scarboro and Karin Spirn ($350 each); 3rd prize: Lysley Tenorio, Lyn Dilorio, and Jack Wooster ($200 each); 4th prize: Cat Dale and Jessica Hahn ($100 each)

Emily Chamberlain Cook Prize in Poetry

The Emily Chamberlain Cook Prize in Poetry is awarded for the most outstanding single unpublished poem.

Both graduate and undergraduate students are free to write up to 26 lines in length, in any meter, and upon any subject. Up to four winners may be chosen at the judge’s discretion.

Yale University Professor Albert S. Cook, formerly on the UC Berkeley faculty, endowed this prize with $1,000. As noted in the August 10, 1909, minutes of the Regents of the University of California, Professor Cook specified that “it is highly desirable” that the prize be awarded “for a poem which reflects honor upon the University, when viewed in the light of the best precedents furnished by England and this country.” Professor Cook further specified that “the University shall be free at any time to reprint the poem as it may choose.”

2023–24: Nina Alessandra Djukic ($1,200), Mary Mussman and Naima Karczmar ($500 each)

2022–23: Mary Mussman, Jessica Laser, and Andy Choi ($400 each)

2021–22: Annabelle Lampson ($800), John James, and Noah Warren ($600 each)

2020–21: Lamiya Gulamhusein, Dominique Salapare, Madelyn Peterson, and Max Kaisler ($625 each)

2019–20: Jennifer Tamayo, Max Kaisler, Lashon A. Daley and Noah Warren ($600 each)

2018–19: Mary Mussman, Mary Wilson, and Dylan Furcall ($800 each)

2017–18: Daniel Benjamin, Anthony Tucci-Berube ($1,100 each)

2016–17: Mary Wilson and Mary Mussman ($1,100 each)

2015–16: 1st prize: Rachel Trocchino ($1,400); 2nd prize: Nathaniel Dolton-Thornton ($700)

2014–15: 1st prize: Andy Nguy ($1,000); 2nd prize: Yaul Perez-Stable Husni ($600); 3rd prize: Alani Hicks Bartlett ($500)

2013–14: 1st prize: Jennifer Lorden, Clint Anderson, Lisa Levin, Michael Shaw ($500 each)

2012–13: 1st prize: Evan Klavon ($1,000); 2nd prize: Rachel Trocchio ($500); Honorable Mention: Andrew David King and Allison Yates ($250 each)

2011–12: Darius Carrick, Andrew David King, Pamela Glazier, and Vanessa Ing ($350 each)

2010–11: Laura Ferris, Kathryn Hindenlang, Tara Phillips, and Patricia Yen ($525 each)

2009–10: Joe Cadora, Ashley Lystne, Eamon O'Connor, and Gillian Osborne ($550 each)

2008–09: Natasha Arora, Pamela Krayenbuhl, Steven Lance, and Craig Perez ($500 each)

2007–08: Meredith Higgins and Clifford Mak ($150)

2006–07: Hillary Gravendyk, Jeremy Graves, Marisa Libbon, and Yosefa Raz ($300 each)

2005–06: Olivia Friedman ($300)

2004–05: Edgar Garcia, Dorian Gesler, and Shanyin Chang ($300 each)

2003–04: Ellen Samuels , Laura Wetherington, Christine Harrison, and Jessica Zychowicz ($300 each)

2002–03: Kimberly Johnson ($300)

2001–02: Sandra Lim, Marisa Libbon, Yasmin Golan, & Lynley Lys ($300 each)

2000–01: Emily Beall ($600), David Ruderman ($400), Jasmine Bina ($200)

1999–00: Julie Anderson, Ben Chaika, Elizabeth Hillman, and Kimberly Johnson ($300 each)

1998–99: 1st prize: Kimberly Johnson ($500); 2nd prize: Gibson Fay-LeBlanc ($500)

1997–98: 1st prize: Nadia Nurhussein ($300); runners-up: Emily Abendroth, Robyn Brooks, Delphine Hwang, and Padraig Riley ($150 each)

Roselyn Schneider Eisner Prizes

In 1963, Samuel Marks established an endowment of $250,000 for the advancement of the arts on the Berkeley campus, in memory of his stepdaughter, Roselyn Schneider Eisner, an artist and sculptor. The Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on the Arts recommended the money be used to establish prizes in each of the Creative Arts.

Photo Imaging

The Eisner Prizes in Photo-Imaging are open to all UC Berkeley graduates and undergraduates of any major.

Contest deadlines vary. Please check the Prizes and Honors home page for this prize’s deadline.

• Eisner Photo-Imaging Prize Rules add Please review the General Rules for Competitive Prizes . Additional rules for the Eisner Photo-Imaging Prize contest are listed below. Submission link: Competitive Prizes Submission You may submit 1 to 3 black-and-white or color images. Submissions must be anonymous. Include the last  four digits of your student ID number on your file name and the total number of photographic images you're entering (e.g., "#1234 1 of 3," "#1234 2 of 3," "#1234 3 of 3"). Submissions may show either a body of work or 3 photos exploring 3 different themes. Judges will look for the artistic dimensions of the photos presented, including the creative uses of color ( tone values if you are showing black and white prints), lighting, graphic composition and framing .

Film and Video

The Eisner Prizes in Film and Video contest is open to both graduates and undergraduates in any department.

One to three films may be submitted, but the judges will only view up to 30 minutes of film for each applicant.

Contest deadlines vary. Please check the Prizes and Honors page for this prize’s deadline.

• Eisner Film and Video Prize Rules add Please review the General Rules for Competitive Prizes . The Eisner Film and Video Prize contest also has additional rules listed below. Students can submit films as a Quicktime file on a flash/thumb drive or via a working URL on either Youtube or Vimeo. The applicant must make sure the URL is open and working, and that the thumb drive is both PC and MAC compatible You may submit 1 – 3 entries but are encouraged to submit only your best work. All film submissions must be in finished form, ready for public exhibition. Unfinished works or work-in-progress will not be considered. At least one submission must have been made during the period of your enrollment as a student on the Berkeley campus. Judges will not view more than 30 minutes of film or video. All submissions must be of the entire film, excerpts will not be accepted for consideration. To be eligible, you need to be enrolled full-time in a degree-granting program for at least one regular semester of the academic year (not including Summer Sessions). Filing for a degree does not constitute enrollment for that academic year. Visiting students are not eligible to apply for prizes. A previous winner of this contest may not enter the following year. Film or video submissions must be labeled with the last four digits of the entrant's student ID (SID) number, the film's title, running time and the original format of the entry (16mm, VHS, URL, thumb drive file. etc.). Also, a brief (one paragraph, typewritten) film description should accompany the submission. The maker's name must not appear on the entry or on the film credits. The Prizes Office, 210 Sproul Hall, will hold film and video entries for pickup until mid-May.

The Eisner Prizes in Poetry and Prose contests are open to all UC Berkeley graduates and undergraduates in any department.

Prose submissions may include novels, plays, or a collection of short stories. Prose submissions should be a substantial body of work with a representative 20–30 pages earmarked. Poetry submissions should be a collection of poems with a minimum of 25 pages to a maximum of 40 pages. Entries must be paginated, stapled and include a table of contents and a title page. This contest may contain submissions that have won in other contests in previous years. However, entries to these contests must consist of a majority of new work not having previously won in any campus contest or simultaneously submitted elsewhere.

Contest deadlines vary. Please check the Prizes and Honors home page for this prize's deadline.

2023–24: Poetry: Andrew David King ($3,000), John James ($1,500) and Noah Warren ($1,500)

Prose: Andrew David King ($1,250) and Maisie Wiltshire-Gordon ($1,250)

2022–23: Poetry: Andrew David King ($3,000), Mary Mussman ($2,000) and Noah Warren ($1,000)

Prose: Landon Kramer ($2,000) and Andy Choi ($2,000)

2021–22: Poetry: Mary Mussman ($3,000), Noah Warren ($1,500) and John James ($1,500)

Prose: No Prizes awarded

2020–21: Poetry: Jennifer Tamayo ($5000)

2019–20: Poetry: Christian Nagler ($5000)

Prose: Elodie Townsend and Sabrina Jaszi ($2,500 each)

2018–19: Poetry: Dylan Cox and Mary Wilson ($5000 each)

Prose: No Prizes Awarded

2017–18: Poetry: Shonushka Sawant ($3000) and Daniel Benjamin ($2000)

Prose: Clair Marie Stancek and Zackary Kiebach ($2,500 each)

2016–17: Poetry: 1st prize: Sahvanna Mazon ($3,000); 2nd prize: Shonushka Sawant ($2,000)

Prose: Zackary Kiebach ($2,000)

2015–16: Poetry: 1st prize: David A. Hernandez ($3,000); 2nd prize: Nathaniel Dolton-Thornton ($2,000)

Prose: Emma Rosenbaum ($2,000)

2014–15: Poetry: Christopher Patrick Miller and Claire Marie Stancek ($2,500 each)

Prose: Andrew David King and Natasha Von Kaenel ($2,500 each)

2013–14: Poetry: Kristopher Kersey, Julia Tianjiao Wang, and David Vandeloo ($2,000 each);

Prose: Andrew David King ($4,000)

2012–13: Poetry: Rebecca Gaydos, Andrew David King, and Ryan Tucker ($2,000 each);

Prose: Kelly Clancy and Rosetta Young ($2,000 each)

2011–12: Poetry: Christopher P. Miller and Yosefa Raz ($3,000 each);

Prose: Brian J. Loo and Leila Mansouri ($2,000 each)

2010–11: Poetry: Rachel Beck, Jane Gregory, S Christopher Miller, and Swati Rana ($2,500 each);

Prose: No award given

2009–10: Poetry: Steven Lance, Gillian Osborne, and Lynn Xu ($2,000 each);

Prose: Nina Estreich and Danica Li ($2,000 each)

2008–09: Poetry: Gillian Osborne and Lijia Xie ($3,000 each);

Prose: 11 entries; Joe Cadora ($4,000)

2007–08: Poetry: Hillary Gravendyk and Chad Vogler ($5,000 each);

Prose: 4 entries; No award given

2006–07: Poetry: Elizabeth Marie Young and Margaret Ronda ($2,500 each);

Prose: Melissa Fall ($5,000)

2005–06: Poetry: Hilary Gravendyk Burrill ($6,000);

Prose: Elaine Castillo and Mark Massoud ($2,000 each)

2004–05: Poetry: Margaret Ronda and Tung-Hui Hu ($2,500 each);

Prose: 1st prize: Neil Colin Satterlund ($3,000); 2nd prize: Katherine Ann Willett ($2,000); Honorable Mention: Dorothy Couchman

2003–04: Poetry: 1st prize: Jennifer Scappetone ($3,000); 2nd prize: Lynn Ziyu Xu ($2,000);

Prose: 1st prize: Elaine Castillo ($2,500); 2nd prize: Ellen Samuels ($2,500)

2002–03: Poetry: Timothy Wood, Julie Carr, and Warren Liu ($2,000 each);

Prose: Elaine Castillo and Frank B. Wildersn III ($2,000 each)

2001–02: Poetry: Jessica Fisher ($3,000) and Anne Walker ($2,000);

Prose: Yekaterina Kosova ($3,000) and Lucia Facone ($2,000)

2000–01: Poetry: 1st prize: Brian Glaser ($3,000); 2nd prize: Jennifer Scappettone ($2,000); Honorable Mention: Ellen Samuels;

Prose: 1st prize: Ann Simon ($3,000); 2nd prize: Yuval Sharon ($2,000); Honorable Mention: Jose Alaniz

1999–00: Poetry: Jessica Fisher, Nadia Nurhussein, and Anne F. Walker ($1,400 each);

Prose: Jose Alaniz and Karen A. Lee ($1,400 each)

1998–99: Poetry: Kim Johnson and Roxana Popescu ($2,333 each);

Prose: Damion Searls ($2,333)

1997–98: Poetry: Ola Metwally, Mathew Struthers, and Karen An-Hwei Lee ($2,333 each);

Prose: Chris Minter ($2,333)

Florence Mason Palmer Prize

The Florence Mason Palmer Memorial Prize is awarded for the best essay of up to 5,000 words dealing with some aspect of international relations.

Open to women undergraduates only.

Established in 1958.

2023–24: Catherine Regan and Sabreen Nuru ($2,500 each)

2022–23:  Caitlin Barotz ($3,000)

2020–21: 1st prize: Kaitlyn Lombardo 2nd prize: Jordan Webb ($3,000 each) ; Honorable Mention: Nawal Seedat and Tara Madhav ($1,500 each)

2019–20: 1st prize: Esther Smith ($4000); Honorable Mention: Nicole Mendoza and Tara Madhav ($2000 each)

2018–19: 1st prize: Sarah Sheets ($4000); 2nd prize: Adriana Weiss and Negeen Khandel ($1000 each)

2017–18: 1st prize: Sarah O'Farrell ($1000); 2nd prize: Lily Greenberg Call and Janani Mohan ($600 each)

2016–17: Zijing Song ($750)

2015–16: Shruthi Gopal ($1,000)

2014–15: 1st prize: Simrit Dhillon ($750); 2nd prize: Mikaela Rear and Lucy Song ($500 each)

2013–14: 1st prize: Tali Gires and Melody Alemansour ($750 each); 2nd prize:  Rebecca Moon and Carina Tai ($500 each)

2012–13: Naomi Egel ($2,500)

2011–12: 1st prize: Jamie Andreson ($2,500); 2nd prize: Maya Yizhaky ($1,500); 3rd prize: Sara Lee ($1,000)

2010–11: No award given

2009–10: 3rd prize only: Ryan Cohen ($500)

2008–09: 1st prize:  Roushani Mansoor, Sarah Weiner, and Lauren Powell ($1,500 each)

2006–07: 1st prize:  Hasina Badani ($2,000)

2005–06: 1st prize:  Elizabeth Mattiuzzi and Julia Gin ($2,500 each)

2004–05: 1st prize: Nancy Si-Ming Liu ($3,000); 2nd prize: Gabriela Maguire ($2,000)

2003–04: 1st prize: Henluen Wang ($300); 2nd prize: Deepa D. Shah ($200)

2002–03: 1st prize: Kristina Kempkey ($300); 2nd prize: Lily Bradley ($200)

2001–02: 1st prize: Whitney Ward ($500)

1999–00: 1st prize: Aeryn Seto ($2,300)

1998–99: 1st prize: Arianne Chernock ($1,000)

1997–98: 2nd prize only: Kathleen Mikulis ($800)

Ina Coolbrith Memorial Poetry Prize

The Ina Coolbrith Memorial Poetry Prize is awarded for the best unpublished poem or group of poems by an undergraduate student at University of California campuses, University of the Pacific, Mills College, Stanford University, Santa Clara University, and St. Mary’s College.

Each participating school may submit three entries to UC Berkeley to compete in the overall contest. For information regarding the submission instructions for other campuses, read Information for Other Participating Campuses below.

On March 18, 1933, a fund of $1,000 contributed by various donors was offered to the Regents for a poetry prize in memory of Ina Coolbrith, Poet Laureate of the State of California. The Ina Coolbrith Memorial Fund was accepted by the Regents on May 11, 1933.

Please review the General Rules for Competitive Prizes (for Berkeley students).

Ina Donna Coolbrith (1841–1928)

Born Josephine Donna Smith, oldest daughter of Don Carlos and Agnes Coolbrith Smith, in Nauvoo, Illinois, March 10, 1841, she entered California through the Beckwourth Pass in a covered wagon train in 1852. Her first poems were published in the Los Angeles Times in 1854. After a brief and tragic marriage at 17, and the death of her child, she moved in the 1860s to San Francisco, where she worked as a journalist on the Overland Monthly . Later she was librarian of the Mechanics Institute Library and the Bohemian Club library, and was the first librarian of the Oakland Public Library. She lost her San Francisco home and all her possessions in the earthquake and fire of 1906. Through the generosity of the best-known California writers of the day, another home was built on Russian Hill, where she lived until the infirmities of age led her to share the home of her niece in Berkeley in 1923. She died there on February 29, 1928.

Ina Coolbrith received many honors, including Poet Laureate of the State of California. She was the first person asked to write a Commencement Ode for the University of California and the first woman member of San Francisco's Bohemian Club. In 1924, Mills College awarded her an honorary Master of Arts degree; as a young woman she had attended Mills, known at the time as Benicia College for Women. On the day of her funeral the Legislature adjourned in her memory and afterward named a 7,900-foot peak near Beckwourth Pass "Mount Ina Coolbrith."

Ina Coolbrith corresponded with Tennyson, Whittier, Longfellow, and Lowell, and was close friends with Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Gertrude Atherton, Joaquin Miller, Charles Warren Stoddard, and William Keith. Jack London called her his "literary mother." Isadora Duncan recalled in her memoirs "the beauty and fire of the poet's eyes."

At the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915 she was appointed President of the Congress of Authors and Journalists. At the Exposition a formal presentation of a laurel wreath was made to her by Dr. Benjamin Ide Wheeler, president of the University of California, and the Board of Regents, with the title "loved, laurel-crowned poet of California."

Some of Ina Coolbrith's most powerful poems were written after her 80th birthday. Her published works include A Perfect Day and Other Poems , Songs from the Golden Gate , and the posthumously published Wings of Sunset .

Each participating campus may submit three entries selected from submissions on their campus. An entry may be a single poem or a group of poems. While the judging to select the overall contest winners rotates from campus to campus, each campus must first forward its entries to UC Berkeley by the contest deadline. The overall contest judge will receive the entries from Berkeley in early February and will be asked to select the contest winners by early March.

The poems need to be typewritten. Include the following information in the upper-right corner of each manuscript:

The last four digits of the student’s campus identification number

The name of the contest

Write entrant information on a separate sheet and include the following:

Local address

Permanent address

Phone number

Email address

Last four digits of student’s campus identification number

Contest name

Title of poem(s)

Since manuscripts cannot be returned and may go astray in the mail, please retain a duplicate.

Winning manuscripts are filed in the University Archives at the Bancroft Library on the UC Berkeley campus.

Entries may be sent to:

Coordinator, Committee on Prizes

Undergraduate Scholarships, Prizes, and Honors

210 Sproul Hall #1964

University of California

Berkeley, CA 94720

[email protected]

(5l0) 642-6888

2021–22: No prize given

2020–21: No prize given

2019–20: 1st prize: Anthony DiCarlo, UC Davis ($600); 2nd prize: Jessica Pham, UCLA ($400); 3rd prize: Rhiannon Wilson, UCLA ($100); Honorable Mention : Jona Peters, Mills College

2018–19: 1st prize: Maia Vicek, Miles College ($1250); Honorable Mentions: Avery Ardent, UC San Diego ($250); Amanda Vong, UC Santa Cruz ($250); Cu Fleshman, UC Irvine ($250)

2017–18: 1st prize: Riley O'Connell, Santa Clara University ($500); 2nd prize: Steffi Pressesky, UC Santa Cruz ($250); 3rd prize Monica Pereles, UC Merced ($250)

2016–17: Serena Balk, UC San Diego; Delphine Candland, UCLA; Kevin Alexander Perez, UC Santa Cruz ($300 each)

2015–16: 1st prize: Nathaniel Dolton-Thornton, UC Berkeley ($500); 2nd prize: Conor MacKenzie Kelly, UC Santa Cruz ($300); 3rd prize: Taelor Ramos, Mills College ($200)

2014–15: 1st prize: Christian Gella, UC San Diego ($1,100); 2nd prize: Katherine Duckworth, Mills College, Antony Fangary, UC Davis, Michelle Felmlee-Gartner, St. Mary's College, and Nilufal Karimi, UC San Diego ($100 each)

2013–14: 1st prize: Claire Bresnahan, Mills College, and Terry Taplin, St. Mary's College ($200 each); 2nd prize: Zoe Goldstein, UCLA, and Olivia Mertz, Mills College ($150 each); 3rd prize: Sabrina Barreto, Santa Clara University, Andrew David King, UC Berkeley, and Desmond Vanderfin, St. Mary's College ($100 each)

2012–13: 1st prize: Jacquelin Balderrama, UC Riverside ($400); 2nd prize: Laura Isabella Sylvan, Santa Clara University ($300); 3rd prize: Sabrina Barreto, Santa Clara University, Molly LaFleur, UC Santa Cruz; and Jacob Minasian, St. Mary's College ($100 each)

2011–12: 1st prize: John Liles, UCSD ($300); 2nd prize: Danni Gorden, UC Berkeley, and Ainsley Kelly, Santa Clara University ($200 each); 3rd prize: Andrew David King, UC Berkeley, Gabriel Malikian, UCLA, April Peletta, UCLA, and Kevin Zambrano, UCSB ($75 each)

2010–11: 1st prize: Nathan McClain, UCLA ($400); 2nd prize: Todd McClintock, UC Davis ($300); 3rd prize: Lynn Wang, UC Irvine and Kazumi Chin, UC Riverside, ($150 each); UC Berkeley winners: Kathryn Hindenlang and Christine Deakers

2009–10: 1st prize: Wesley Holtermann, UCSB ($400); 2nd prize: Katrina Kaplan, UC Berkeley, and Briony Gylgayton, UC Davis ($150) each; 3rd prize: Angela Eun Ji Koh, UCI, Isabelle Avila, UC Merced, and Jared Sandusky-Alford, UC Berkeley, ($100 each)

2008–09: 1st prize: Steven Lance, UC Berkeley ($400); 2nd prize: Esteban Ismael Alvarado, UC Riverside, and Marianna Tekosky, UCLA ($200 each); 3rd prize: Eden Orlando, UCSC, and Kevin Eldridge, UC Riverside, ($100 each)

2007–08: 1st prize: Katie Quarles, UCSC ($300); 2nd R. XiXi Hu, UCLA ($200)

2006–07: Julia Jackson, Mills College ($500)

2005–06: Athena Nilssen, UCLA and Crystal Reed, UCSB ($200 each); Honorable Mention: Renee K. Nelson, UCSC ($100)

2004–05: 1st prize: Jennifer Liou, UCI ($250); 2nd prize: Neil Ferron, Santa Clara University ($150); 3rd prize: Laura Mattingly, UCSC ($100)

2003–04: 1st prize: Jamie Michele Gill, UC Davis, and Laura Wetherington, UC Berkeley ($150 each); 2nd prize: Olivia Friedman, UC Berkeley, and Tina Sohaili, UCI ($100 each)

2002–03: 1st prize: Amaranth Borsuk, UCLA ($300); 2nd prize: Christina Ross, UC Irvine ($200)

2001–02: 1st prize: Kristen Holden, UCSC ($250); 2nd prize: Pepper Luboff, UC Berkeley ($150); 3rd prize: Yasmin Golan, UC Berkeley ($100)

2000–01: 1st prize: Hannah Love, Mills College ($300), 2nd prize: Elsie Rivas, Santa Clara University ($200), Allyson Seal and John Cross, UCLA ($50 each)

1999–00: Francesca Hersh, UCSC, Maggi Michel, UCLA, Aeryn Seto, UC Berkeley, Virginia Whitney Weigand, UC Davis ($100 each)

1998–99: 1st prize: Gareth S. Lee, Santa Clara University, ($250); 2nd prize: Kristen Robertson, Mills College ($150); 3rd prize: Jasmine Donahaye, UC Berkeley ($100)

1997–98: 1st prize: Emma Marxer, Mills College ($150); 2nd prize: E. Tracy Grinnell, Mills College ($100); 3rd prize: Ronald Laran, UC Davis, Lisa Visendi, St. Mary's, and Shannon Welch, UCSC ($50 each); Honorable Mention: Laura-Marie Taylor, UCSB

Lili Fabili and Eric Hoffer Essay Prize

The Lili Fabilli and Eric Hoffer Essay Prize is awarded for the best essays of 500 words or fewer on a topic chosen by the Committee on Prizes.

The contest is open to students, faculty, and staff of the UC Berkeley campus of the University of California. Prizes awarded to faculty and staff are paid through the Berkeley payroll system and taxes are taken out of the disbursement.

Chat GPT: savior or curse?

In a letter dated April 13, 1970, Eric Hoffer wrote to the Regents of the University of California: "I intend to give to the Berkeley campus of the University of California at least $10,000 in July 1970. The income of the fund shall be devoted to providing an annual prize or prizes for 500-word essays written by students, faculty, or staff at the Berkeley campus of the University. The sole criteria for the prizes shall be originality of thought and excellence in writing. This fund shall be known as the Lili Fabilli and Eric Hoffer Essay Prize." Hoffer felt very strongly that every idea could be expressed in a few words. Hoffer's own remarks follow:

2023–24: Ryan Lackey ($3,000), Annie Foo ($2,000) and Mary Mussman ($1,000) 

2022–23: 1st prize: Ryan Lackey ($3,000); 2nd prize: Bryan Jones ($2,000); 3rd prize: Andrew Kiser ($1,000)

2021–22:  1st prize: Ryan Lackey and Mary Mussman ($3000 each); 2nd prize: ($2000)

2020–21:  1st prize: Alex Brostoff ($3000); 2nd prize: Alysu Liu ($2000); 3rd prize: Michael Papias  ($1000); 4th prize: Drew Kiser, Landon Iannamico and Roshonda Walker ($500 each)

2019–20: 1st Prize: Rebecca Brunner and Marcelo Garzo ($2000 each); 2nd Prize: Jordan Diac Depasquale and Bryan K Jones ($1000 each); 3rd Prize: Luisa M. Giulianetti, Ryan Lackey, Isaac Engelberg and Laura Marostica ($500 each)

Topic: Confidence Without Attitude

2018–19: 1st prize: Elliott Lewis ($1000 each); Sourabh Harihar, Justin Hudak, Tara Madhav, Max Stevenson, Charlie Tidmarsh ($600 each); 3rd prize: Lily Call, Evan Cui, Rudraveer Vinay Reddy ($200 each)

Topic: The End of Civil Discourse?

2017–18: 1st prize: Katherine Beniger, Alexandra Maloney, JaVonte Morris-Wilson, David Olin, Jack Sadler ($700 each); 2nd prize: Maggie Mead, Ishani Joshi ($300 each); 3rd prize: Evan Bauer, Irina Popescu, Hideyasu Kurose, Rudraveer Reddy ($225 each)

Topic: Is Free Speech Free? 

2016–17: 1st prize: Maura Nolan, Evan Bauer, Luis Edward Tenorio, Noah Whiteman ($650 each); 2nd prize: Kristina Chan, Ariana Lightner, Brit Moller, Irina Popescu, Michele Rabkin ($250 each); 3rd prize: Bryan Jones, William McGregor, Carter Keeling ($100 each)

Topic: Advice to the new Chancellor

2015–16: Evan Bauer, Eric Dasmalchi, Natya Dharmosetio, Paige M. Johnson, Mihir Joshi, Pawanjot Kaur, Peiting Carrie Li, William McGregor (staff), Phillip Merlo, and Sharada Narayan ($500)

Topic: A Public University

2014–15: Alexandra Kopel, Bruno Mikanowski, and Carolyn Winter/ Staff ($1,500 each)

Topic: Carillon Ringing 

2013–14: Andrew David King and Ramona del Pozo ($1,000 each)

Topic: What I Don't Know

2012–13: 51 entries; Lindsay Bergstrom (staff), Timothy Borjian, Pierre Bourbonnais, Kelly Clancy, Gail Ford (staff), and Leah Romm ($800 each)

Topic: Gravity

2011–12: Kathy Bradley (staff), Joe Homer, Alex Setzepfandt (staff), and Sara Thoi ($1,000 each)

Topic: Persuade Me

2010–11: 1st prize: Shareena Samson (staff) ($1,200); 2nd prize: Patricia Argueza, Jing "Jonathan" Wong, and Alina Xu ($600 each)

Topic: The End of Civility

2009–10: Bryan Jones (staff), Salman Qasim, and Viola Tang ($1,650 each)

Topic: Whose University?

2008–09: Linda Finch-Hicks (staff), Jacob Mikanowski, Kofi Boakye, and Jeremy Suizo ($750 each)

Topic: Rock, Paper, Scissors

2007–08: Joseph Cadora, Jacob Mikanowski, and Xialou Ning ($1,000 each)

Topic: In Defense of Sloth

2006–07: Samuel E. Pittman ($1,500) and Xiaolu Ning ($1,500)

Topic: Whatever You Say, Say Nothing

2005–06: Karen Sullivan, Jacqueline Palhegyi, and Zachary Gordon ($1,000 each)

Topic: Looking Forward to Looking Back

2004–05: Erin Cooper, Lawrence Ruth (staff), and Sandra Wulff (staff) ($1,000 each)

Topic: What I'd Really Like to Do Is...

2003–04: 1st prize: Casey Dominguez ($1,000); 2nd prize: Ken Prola ($750); 3rd prize: Ana Martinez ($500); 4th prize: Sarang Dalal and Michele Rabkin ($375 each)

Topic: What Were They Thinking?

2002–03: 1st prize: Ana Martinez and Michael Rancer (staff) ($750 each); 2nd prize: Julie Rodriguez (staff) and Carol Wood (staff) ($500 each)

Topic: Self-Deception: Benefits and Consequences

2001–02: Eric Walton, Joanne Sandstrom (staff), Joseph Kim, Nellie Haddad (staff) ($750 each); Honorable Mentions: Jimmy Tran, Carol Wood (staff), Lynley Lys, and Karen Lam

Topic: If Only

2000–01: Zack Rogow ($1,000); Ken Chen, Cassandra Dunn, Zachary Gordon, and Pat Soberanis ($800 each)

Topic: Are Books Dead?

1999–00: Casey Knudsen ($1,000); Amanda Cundiff, Eric McGhee, Serban Nacu, and Sissel Waage ($500 each)

Topic: Networks

1998–99: 1st prize: Kathryn Renee Albe, Paul Klein, Joanne Palamountain, Sissel Waage, and Zack Rogow ($500 each)

Topic: Brushstrokes

1997–98: 1st prize: Virginia Matzek ($1,250); 2nd prize: Dominic Ang ($750)

Topic: Where There Is Light . . .

1996–97: Kathy Gether

Topic: Hello 2000

1995–96: 1st prize: Anna Moore (staff) and Maureen Morley (staff) ($1,000 each)

Topic: Fired With Enthusiasm

1994–95: 1st prize: Chris Haight (staff) and Reed Evans ($1,000 each)

Topics: A Moment's Notice and How Beautiful

1993–94: 1st prize: Roberto Landazuri ($1,000); 2nd prize: Ingrid Zommers and Jim Lake (staff) ($500 each)

Topic: What's Next?

1992–93: 1st prize: Steve Tillis, Letitia Carper (staff), David Krogh (staff), and David Schweidel (staff) ($250 each)

Topic: What an Original Idea!

1991–92: 1st prize: Christopher Galvin and Steve Tillis ($700 each); 2nd place: Celia Carlson and William Corley ($300 each)

Topic: What a Century!

1990–91: 1st prize: Michael Ditmore; 2nd prize: Daniel Lee; 3rd prize: Shirley Hodgkinson and Ramah Commanday

Topic: The Sin of Cain

1989–90: 1st prize: Tim Edwards; 2nd prize: Paul Jaminet, David Krogh, and Joanne Sandstrom

Topic: The Thankful/The Thankless

1988–89: 1st prize: Ramah Commanday; 2nd prize: Kathy Newman and George Huang

Topic: Smoldering Embers

1987–88: 1st prize: John Nebrhass, Kathy Newman, Anthony Robinson-While, and William Webber

Topic: Presidential Campaigns

1986–87: 1st prize: John Hatton; 2nd prize: Dave Erickson and Stuart Wald

Topic: Hair Shirts

1985–86: 1st prize: Charlotte Redemann; 2nd prize: Doris Lynch

Topic: Patterns

1984–85: 1st prize: Kirin Narayan; 2nd prize: Benjamin Watson; Honorable Mention: Christie McCarthy (staff), Carol Pitts, and Helen Workman (staff)

Topic: Pets and Animals

1983–84: 1st prize: Debra Cooper; 2nd prize: Donald Green; Honorable Mention: Elizabeth Anderson, Ann Elliott, Christine Feldhorn, Andrew Lunt, Ellen Nakashima, Thomas Simmons, Alan Stephen, and Monica Zorovich

Topic: California

1982–83: 1st prize: Richard Reinhardt; 2nd prize: Susan E. Bailey

Topic: Trees

1981–82: 1st prize: Lizbeth L. Hasse; 2nd prize: Barry Taxman. Essay prizes without a topic awarded to: 1st prize: Professor David Littlejohn; 2nd prize: Matthew M. Neal; Honorable Mention: Joanne Sandstrom and Jeffrey Norris Klink

Topic: Our Most Over-Valued Institution

1980–81: Christopher Rayner and Jennifer L. Walden ($250 each)

Topic: Should California Be Split into Two States?

1979–80: Richard Ogar ($500)

Topic: Should Public Laws Regulate Private Vice?

1978–79: No award given

Topic: Where Should Humankind Go Next?

1977–78: Paul Chernoff ($500)

Topic: In What Additional Field Should a Nobel Prize Be Awarded?

1976–77: S.M. Blair ($500)

Topic: Should There Be Olympic Games in the Future?

1975–76: Jeffrey Lewis Gold ($500)

Topic: What Image or Figure Redefining and Symbolizing the American Dream Can We Offer in 1976?

1974–75: S.M. Blair ($500)

Topic: What Is the Place of Grade Winning in an Education?

1973–74: Ingrid Maidel Krohn ($500)

Topic: How Do We Change Our Attitudes in the Face of Diminishing Natural Resources?

1972–73: John Thomas Gage ($500)

Topic: Is Zero Population Growth an Invasion of Privacy or a Collective Necessity?

1971–72: Leslie Morris Golden ($500)

Topics: F.S.M., People's Park, and Cambodia: Whither the Direction and What Are the Functions of the Contemporary University?

1970–71: Bryan Louis Pfaffenberger ($500)

Topic: The Modern City: Survival or Suicide?

Nicola de Lorenzo Prize in Music Composition

The Nicola De Lorenzo Prize in Music Composition is awarded for the best original completed musical composition.

The prize competition is open to both graduate and undergraduate students of any major. The composition is required to be a piece composed during your matriculation at UC Berkeley. Submit a score and, if possible, a recording of the composition. For music that is not notated (such as fixed media pieces, improvised performances, and so on), submit a recording with a note about the work and why it is not notated. All entries will be judged blind—your name should not appear on recordings or scores.

The Nicola De Lorenzo Prize in Music Composition was established in 1958.

2023–24: Eda Er and Owen Klein ($1,500 each)

2022–23: Alfred Jimenez, Dionysius Nataraja, Owen Klein ($1,000 each)

2021–22: Andrew Harlan, Alfred Jimenez ($2,000 each), Leo W. Yang ($500)

2020 –21: No award given

2019–20: Hwa-Chan Yu, Maija Hynninen, James Stone, Curtis Dahn ($1125)

2018–19: Selim Goncu, James Stone, Clara Olivares, Jeremy Wexler, Maija Hynninen ($1000)

2017–18: Oren Boneh, Selim Goncu, Antonio Juan Marcos Cavazos, Trevor Van de Velde ($1000)

2016–17: 1st Prize: Lily Chen ($1,200); 2nd Prize: Scott Rubin,Selim Gonchu ($800); 3rd Prize: Kayla Cashetta ($700)

2015–16: 1st prize: Antonio Juan-Marcos Cavazos ($1,000); 2nd prize: Ursula Kwong-Brown, Jeremy Wexler, Hwa-Chan Yu, and Zhoushu Herakleitos Ziporyn ($500); 3rd prize: Kayla Cashetta, and Scott Rubin ($250)

2014–15: 1st prize: Amadeus Regucera ($2,500); 2nd prize: Lily Chen ($1,000)

2013–14: 1st prize: Lily Chen ($1,750); 2nd prize: Amadeus Regucera ($1,250); 3rd prize: Andrew V. Ly ($500)

2012–13: 1st prize: Matthew Schumaker ($3,000); 2nd prize: Thatchatham Silsupan ($1,000); 3rd prize: Jose Rafael Valle Gomes da Costa ($500)

2011–12: 1st prize: Javier Jimmy Lopez and Amadeus Regucera ($1,300 each); 2nd prize: Thatchatam Silsupan, Matthew Goodheart, and Sivan Eldar ($800 each)

2010–11: 1st prize: Javier Jimmy Lopez ($1,000); 2nd prize: David Coll, Robin Estrada, Jen Wang, Daniel Cullen ($750 each); 3rd prize: Nils Bultmann, Matt Schumaker ($500 each)

2009–10: 1st prize: Amadeus Regucera ($2,000); 2nd prize: Evelyn Ficarra and Heather Frasch ($1,200 each); 3rd prize: Gabrielle Angeles ($600)

2008–09: 1st prize: Matthew Goodheart ($2,000); 2nd prize Amadeus Regucera, David Coll and Robin Estrada ($1,000 each)

2007–08: 1st prize: Robert Yamasato and Heather Frasch ($2,000 each); 2nd prize: Jimmy Lopez ($1,000)

2006–07: 1st prize: Aaron Einbond, Robert Yamasato, and Mason Bates ($1,666 each)

2005–06: 1st prize: Mason Bates and Aaron Einbond ($2,500 each)

2004–05: 1st prize: Yiorgos Vassilandonakis and Mason Bates ($2,000 each); 2nd prize: Aaron Einbond ($1,000)

2003–04: 1st prize: Fernando Benadon ($750); 2nd prize: Jean Ahn, David Bithell and Brian Kane ($250 each)

2002–03: 1st prize: Reynold Tharp ($750) and Mason Bates ($750)

2001–02: 1st prize: Keeril Makan ($750); 2nd prize: Mason Bates, Brian Kane, and Philipp Blume ($250 each)

1999–00: 1st prize: Brian Current ($700); 2nd prize: Fernando Benadon, Dmitri Tymoczko, and Michael Zbyszyriski ($600 each)

1998–99: 1st prize: Fernando Benadon, Brian Current, Keeril Makan, and Dmitri Tymoczko ($500 each)

1997–98: 1st prize: Eitan Steinberg ($800); 2nd prize: Keeril Makan ($700); 3rd prize: Reynold Tharp ($500)

Anne and Benjamin Goor Prize in Jewish Studies

The Anne and Benjamin Goor Prize in Jewish Studies is awarded annually to two graduate and two undergraduate students for essays on research in any area of Jewish Studies.

Creative works are not eligible. The essays must have been written after the previous year’s submission deadline and must have been written while the authors are registered students in good standing at UC Berkeley. For those years in which one or more prizes are not awarded, the prize money shall be made available for prize augmentation or additional prizes in another year, as recommended by the judges. There may be no more than two winning submissions by a single student.

The Benjamin Goor Prize in Jewish Studies was established in 1977 in memory of Benjamin Goor by his wife, Anne, to support programs and research in Jewish Studies. In 2005, upon the occasion of Anne’s death, the prize was renamed the Anne and Benjamin Goor Prize in Jewish Studies. Anne and Benjamin Goor were an integral part of the Jewish community in Phoenix, during and after World War II. During the war, their home was a kosher Shabbat and Passover haven for servicemen stationed at nearby bases. Anne was active in synagogue activities, B’nai B’rith Women, and Hadassah, serving as chapter president. She received many awards for her contributions to these organizations.

The Goor Prize is administered by Center for Jewish Studies. 

2021–22: Juliette Rosenthal, graduate winner and Meghana Kumar, undergraduate winner ($2,000)

2020–21: Oren Yirmiya, graduate winner ($1,500) and Wyatt Grauman, undergraduate winner ($1,500)

2019–20: Chloe Piazza, graduate winner and Walker Laughlin, undergraduate winner ($2,000)

2018–19: Yael Segalovits Eshel and Jennifer Stover-Kemp ($1,500); Gilad Barach, Sarah Goldwasser, and Andrew Kuznetsov ($1,000)

2017–18: Zachary Handler, Alexis Polevoi, Alan Elbaum, Sheer Ganor ($1,500)

2016–17: Balark Mallik, Jennifer Kemp, Danny Luzon, Simone Stirner ($1,000)

2015–16: Danny Luzon and Raphael Magarik, graduate winners ($1,000); Nathan Wexler, undergraduate winner ($1,000)

2014–15: Sheer Ganor and Danny Luzon, graduate winners ($2,000); no undergraduate winners selected

2013–14: Nicholas Baer and Anna Elena Torres, graduate winners ($1,000); Elijah Granet and Lisa Levin, undergraduate winners ($1,000)

2012–13: Noah Greenfied and Eyal Bassan, graduate winners ($1,000); no undergraduate winner selected

2011–12: Shira Wilkof and Celina Piser, graduate winners ($475); no undergraduate winner selected

2010–11: Alex Hendricks and Cameron McKee, undergraduate winners ($475); no graduate winner selected

2009–10: Yosefa Raz, graduate winner ($475); Judah Mirvish, undergraduate winner ($475)

2008–09: Zehavit Stern and Benjamin Wurgaft, graduate winners ($475); no undergraduate winner selected

2006–07: Noam Manor and Maya Barzilai, graduate winners ($475); Stephanie Robin Grossman, undergraduate winner ($475)

2005–06: Amos Bitzan and Samuel Thrope, graduate winners ($475); Rachel Wamsley, undergraduate winner ($475)

2004–05: Naomi Shulman, graduate winner; no undergraduate winner selected

2003–04: Lital Levy, graduate winner ($475); David Singer, undergraduate winner ($475)

2002–03: Benjamin Wurgaft and Lital Levy ($475)

2001–02: Rachel Havrelock, graduate winner ($475); Tara Sage Wilstein, undergraduate winner, ($475)

2000–01: Adriana Valencia, Lital Levy, and Lena Salameh shared $475 prize

1999–00: No award given

1998–99: Adriane B. Leveen and Lital Levy, graduate winners ($475); Jack Draper, undergraduate winner ($475)

1997–98: Gil Hochberg and Shachar Pinsker ($475)

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New Miami magazine debuts with essays, poetry and — of course — "Chisme"

Move over, New Yorker.

What's happening: A fresh literary magazine, The Miami Native , launched this month with an online edition and a collectible-quality print version.

• It includes long-form, magazine-style articles and essays, plus fiction, poetry, a gossip-type column called " Chisme " and more.

Why it matters: The publication aims to capture the city's spirit, intelligence and sense of humor through a mix of highbrow, middlebrow and lowbrow content.

• "Reading is supposed to be something that gives your life pleasure, that enlivens your day-to-day, your routines, eases your suffering," editor-in-chief Grazie Sophia Christie tells Axios.

Driving the news: Christie grew up in Miami, studied English at Harvard and lived in London. There, she was introduced to Ginevra Lily Davis, who had been studying at a Stanford University program in Paris but was moving to Miami.

• They noticed Miami was teeming with smart, creative people who were building brands and making art. They set out to found a magazine that could become a cultural institution and define the city as a literary capital.
• "Miami is sometimes like the Wild West, where you can start something that really should obviously exist and doesn't," Christie says.

Zoom out: "There's been a huge revival of print magazines in New York, particularly started by young women," Davis tells Axios, citing The Drift , The Drunken Canal, Forever Magazine and Heavy Traffic .

What they're saying: "We want, of course, erudite New York intellectuals who are here to think that our magazine is so smart," says Christie.

Yes, but: The editors also hope it will reflect the lives of, and be read by, a wide swath of locals: "the girl coming back from the farmers market, or the man who works 14-hour days and picks this up for his family, for them to read the astrology and laugh around the dinner table," Christie says.

Details: Find the print edition at Books & Books .

• The editors are seeking submissions from writers and artists for upcoming issues and are keen to publish diverse voices, including writers who have never been published before.
• Contributors are paid.

Get more local stories in your inbox with Axios Miami.

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Poets that Speak to Us: Vignettes for National Poetry Month

To mark the end of National Poetry Month, The Crimson's Arts Board reflected on some of their favorite poets. Whether read for a class or just a moment of respite from the hustle and bustle of the end of the semester, poets from ko ko thett to E. E. Cummings have left a lasting impression on these writers.

My favorite poem in high school didn’t describe my life in any way, yet I loved it for the way that it felt like my life — my life in that infinite dash of senior year. My attachment to Ada Limón’s “The Russian River” hinged on one utterly unextraordinary line: “It was the summer of our final year of high school.”

From that, I extrapolated. I thought that I — like the poet — believed that “the world was perfectly defined by goodness and realness and the opposite of those.” I believed, in some non-literal way, that “I was going to marry you.”

Unlike the intricate poetry I loved elsewhere, Limón’s lines had the elusive allure of straightforward language. I did not analyze anything with each rereading, but indulged in the words at their surface so as to not break the feeling: The world was vast and pure, temporary and never-ending.

Reading “The Russian River” again, knowing I never even drove on the highway, or got stoned, or swam in a river in high school, I don’t think I will ever understand the poem in that way again. What it means to me now is that once, I must have been “holding on” to something beautiful — “what life was, and what I had always wanted” — something glimmering under the sunlight on the current, just out of my reach.

—Staff writer Isabelle A. Lu can be reached at [email protected] .

Adam Zagajewski

“And any journey, any kind of trip, / are only mysticism for beginners,” Adam Zagajewski writes. The belief in making meaning from the mundane pervades throughout his poetry. For Zagajewski, who was forcibly displaced from Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) to Poland after World War II, the idea of home is understandably transient, and his poems grapple with this ephemerality through an examination of everyday life. His poems capture the fleeting, urging us to live in the present; in fact, one of his poems is aptly titled “Don’t Allow the Lucid Moment to Dissolve.” What’s so remarkable about Zagajewski’s poetry, though, is that he confronts everything the world has to offer — the good, the bad, and the ugly — with a wonder for it all. In Zagajewski’s world, optimism is as easy as breathing. We “must praise the mutilated world,” he argues, precisely because the world is also indifferent: “I thought that at the last stop / the meaning of it all would stand revealed, / but nothing happened, nothing, / the driver ate a roll with cheese, / two old women talked quietly / about prices and diseases.” And indeed, when he passed in March of 2021, the world mourned — and continued moving forward.

—Staff writer Angelina X. Ng can be reached at [email protected] .

E. E. Cummings, Class of 1915

When I first encountered the eclectic poetry of E. E. Cummings, my mind was opened to the possibilities of what poetry could look like. Poems like “[2 Little Whos]” profoundly impacted the way I view syntax, form, and literature as a whole. The stanza “(far from a grown / -up i&you- / ful world of known) / who and who” is only 13 words and yet overflows with meaning. From the enjambment to the blending of words in “i&you,” each phrase and mark is a wellspring of poetic significance. I am in awe of his ability to use unconventional syntax to pack layers of meaning into just a few lines.

As a creative writer myself, E. E. Cummings has changed the way I approach syntax, both in poetic and prosaic endeavors. Ever since that fateful moment in my junior year of high school when I discovered his work, I have been eternally moved by his poems — just ask the well-worn anthology on my shelf.

—Staff writer Aiden J. Bowers can be reached at [email protected] .

ko ko thett

“In places where I am considered white, my yellow accent / always holds me back,” writes Burmese poet ko ko thett. In his poetry collection, “Bamboophobia,” poems side-by-side in Burmese and English confront writing for a Western audience and the struggle of maintaining poetic authenticity across languages. To non-Burmese readers, some of his lines like “Blood begets blood. Margot begets Margot. Cross when the / light is green. Double-cross when the Roselles are red” can seem foreign and their images impenetrable. Yet, there is value in the collection’s various figures of speech, anecdotes, and idioms from the poet’s native culture that are presented without markers of differentiation. His poetry inspiringly defies the need to sound “natural” with quips and images that at times run the risk of sounding awkward to native English speakers. However, when coupled with the political history of oppression that informs his poems, this language and its inventiveness is not only a mark of poetic imagination but an emancipatory endeavor. Thus, even when discussing gory practices of torture, there is an irrepressible playfulness in his unyielding language. When reading thett, one can see poetry as a force of liberation.

—Staff writer Sean Wang Zi-Ming can be reached at [email protected] .

Elizabeth Bishop

This semester, I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Elizabeth Bishop in one of my English classes. Bishop — with her profound sentences that scrutinize humankind’s place in the natural world — understands the art of reduction, taking enormous, vague, and abstract questions about life and death and humanity and reducing them into a small yet compact framework. In her poem “Objects and Apparitions,” Bishop writes, “Minimal, incoherent fragments: the opposite of History, creator of ruins, out of your ruins you have made creations.” The wealth of Bishop’s lyricism continuously astounds me — her manipulation of sound to convey message, for instance, holds me in a perpetual awe. Bishop’s poems retain this persistent sense of understanding of human nature — she was able to see humanity for what it is. As an aspiring writer myself, I endeavor to write about the world as she did.

—Staff writer Thomas A. Ferro can be reached at [email protected] .

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