Page:Poetry, a magazine of verse, Volume 7 (October 1915-March 1916).djvu/134

POETRY: A Magazine of Verse

Once a year it becomes the agreeable duty of the editors and Advisory Committee of to award one or more prizes. This year we shall have the pleasure of awarding three. In addition to the Levinson prize of two hundred dollars, two guarantors, who wish to be nameless, have requested us to honor two other poets of our third year with prizes of one hundred and of fifty dollars. The Levinson prize must go to a citizen of the United States, but the two other prizes are offered without such restriction.

The jury feels that there is a certain presumption in offering and awarding a prize for the "best poem," since no jury can pass final judgment; and that it will be in better taste, and perhaps in the end more truthful, to omit the word "best" from our offers and awards in the future. The prizes will continue to be given, naturally, for the poems, or groups of poems, which seem to the jury the most worthy of the honor; but we shall not assume to rob Father Time of his prerogative by deciding which are "the best." Our prizes are awarded in the same spirit which art juries aim at in making the numerous and munificent awards at the annual exhibitions in our large cities: they express the admiration of fellow-artists for work of superior quality, but they do not express infallible or irrevocable judgment.

In this spirit, then, we award the three prizes so generously offered for the encouragement of the art. Works of members of the jury are ineligible, including this year Old