National Book Awards Acceptance Speeches
Howard Moss, Winner of the 1972 POETRY AWARD for Selected Poems
Ladies and gentlemen:
I think most poets feel that they work in the dark. Ideas, notions, phrases and lines sometimes seem to come from nowhere; their sources need to be discovered, and the words coaxed out, developed, and expanded. But poets work in the dark in another sense. They often feel they’re not read and that they go unrewarded. Like a lot of other poets, I’ve known that feeling and so it is gratifying for me, today, to find that, after many years of work, other people think the work has value. I’m delighted to receive the National Book Award in Poetry for 1972, and I feel honored to share the award with the late Frank O’Hara.
In a period that seems to be distinguished by public lies, when Diogenes would be hard put to find even a decent lamp, it is reassuring to know that poets, though they speak in different voices and in different ways, always try to speak in an individual voice, a voice true to feeling and yet exact in language. I believe in such a voice, and in the effort to find it and the struggle to maintain it. A voice that isn’t true to itself speaks for no one.
In accepting the award, I wish to express my gratitude to the national Book Committee, to Atheneum Publishers, and to the judges on the poetry panel. Thank you.