Last spring, while I was working on the manuscript that became American Samizdat, I was also writing a book of sonnets and heroic crowns, Simple Machines. Because a heroic crown contains 15 individual sonnets, I knew that my four heroic crowns would probably be challenging to publish. What journal would be willing to devote that many pages to one poet’s work?

So, when I heard from the Mississippi Review that one of these crowns, “A Human Scale,” had been selected by Angela Ball as the winner of their annual poetry prize, I was both stunned and ecstatic. You can read more about the wonderful work that the Mississippi Review publishes here.