COMMENTS FROM CONTEST JUDGE MARIE KANE:

A note to all finalists:

You are to be congratulated on your excellent entries to the 2011 Sarah Mook Poetry Contest. What trouble I had this year in deciding the winners! Because your work was advanced on all levels, my efforts took a longer time than usual to make the final decision.

Know that your poems were read with care and attention to detail. I enjoyed every one of them!

Sincerely,
Marie Kane

This mature first place poem concerns the speaker giving comfort to his or her father who has experienced a drastic and painful change in life. The reader suspects that a job loss is the event that the poem concerns; however, wisely, the poem does not directly reveal the source of the father's anguish. Through excellent pacing and sharp imagery, "I Was 10" details a father's pain and a child's willingness to comfort and understand.

The opening three lines of the poem reveal the situation with exact language and excellent line breaks; note the verb "huddled": "The moment I saw you / huddled in your hands, / I saw the sadness." The description "huddled in your hands" is visually compelling and made me take immediate notice of this poem.

The speaker goes on to describe the comfort given. "I wanted to comfort you / like you comforted me / through out [sic] my life. . . . / 'Daddy its [sic] okay, its okay." This need for giving back is expressed in such direct and simple language that the reader does not doubt the heartfelt veracity of the words.

The next section concerns the effect of this situation. The speaker tries "to hold back my own tears" and realizes that "now money is strict." I find this metaphor for money to be so apt, reflecting the situation's harsh and rigorous nature.

The father, as the speaker's "hero," is described in the next section:

When I saw you . . . my hero
Shamed of what he had become
Shamed of what he had put on himself,
There was no doubt
that it changed us emotionally.

Note that the speaker uses the pronoun "us" in the last line, thus aligning him or herself with the father in an emotionally supportive way.

In the next few lines, the speaker reverses comfort roles. He or she asks the father to think of "the good things in life," and for a "smile," as "my coach would / after we lost a game." The speaker realizes that "Dads are supposed to be strong and tough / but "sometimes things get to you," and "things aren't always / how they are supposed to be." It is this depth of selfless understanding that demonstrates honesty and maturity in this poem.

To end the poem, the speaker returns to the immediate situation with striking detail

[he] looks up at me, weeping inside.
He says nothing
but holds hands out in front of him
like he's offering up his life,
like he wants to feel nothing more.

What an insightful observation! The sharp, resonant detail in "holds hands out in front of him / like he's offering up his life" deftly presents the physical desperation in this scene. The speaker realizes the father's anguish - and not with personal concern for self, but with an empathy for another that speaks to this writer's selflessness.

The poem concludes with vivid physical description, and not with a concluding concept, such as many writers of this age do. This gives the reader a picture to fully comprehend the heartache revealed in the poem:

Then he buries back into
the palms of his hands.
I wrap my arms around his shoulders
and embrace the silence
we might never get again.

Here, the speaker not only embraces his or her father, but also "the silence / we might never get again," a realization that has far-reaching implications for both.

This deserving first place poem evaluates the impact of a father's devastating dilemma with depth of compassion and original imagery; it deftly moves between interior feelings of the personae in the poem, and description of the actions of both. The poem's staging of the situation, controlled voice, and skill with pacing and diction defines this new world with disquieting revelations.

Thank you for the privilege of reading your work.

Marie Kane
Final Judge, Sarah Mook Poetry Contest