Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prizes for 2008

http://www.DorothyPrizes.org/

These prizes have been established by Marvin Rosenberg in memory of his late wife, Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg. The intent is to encourage the work of new, young poets. Several prizes varying from $1,000 up to as much as $25,000 will be awarded for the finest lyric poems celebrating the spirit of life.

The competition is open to any writer under the age of 40 on November 6, 2008. All poets, published or unpublished, are welcome to enter, but only previously unpublished poems are eligible for the competition.

Each entrant may submit one to three separate poems. Submissions must be in English, the original work of the entrant, and previously unpublished. Poems should express the personal experience of the entrant, so please no translations! Brevity will be appreciated: if more than one poem is submitted, only one of the submitted poems may be more than thirty lines in length.

Entries must be received no later than October 18, the third Saturday in October, 2008. Entries should be submitted by mail to:
Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prizes
PO Box 2306
Orinda, California 94563
Each poem must be printed on a separate sheet. Please submit two copies of each poem, with your name and address clearly marked on each page of one copy only. Please include an index card with your name and address, phone number, e-mail address and the title(s) of your poem(s). Poems submitted will not be returned. An entry fee of 10 dollars is required for submissions mailed in the United States: Checks should please be made out to Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund. Foreign entries are exempted from the entry fee because of the hassles of international payments.

This website ( www.DorothyPrizes.org ) has been prepared to share information about the Competition. Dorothy’s poems inspired the competition’s emphasis on lyric poems celebrating the spirit of life. Further information concerning the Prizes may be posted here as the deadline approaches. Results will be announced on the website February 5th, 2009, and winners will be contacted shortly before that time.

Visit the 2008 Entrants’ Checklist for a summary of contest details.

Prizewinners may reenter in subsequent years until their cumulative prizes have reached $25,000.

These prizes will be awarded annually. Any person or institution wishing to contribute suggestions about the future structure, administration, or judging of the prizes, or anyone interested in participating in the process, should write to Mary Rosenberg at the above address.

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Dorothy wrote under the name Dorothy Sargent, using her middle name-after her relative John Singer Sargent. Dorothy published poems in prestigious publications, and she was particularly encouraged by Langston Hughes’ appreciation and support for her work. She also wrote intimate poems for her family, some never submitted for publication, treasured gifts to Marvin and Barr. Still, for various reasons her career as a writer did not develop as it might have.
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The bottom line is our society does not yet provide women in the workplace with the type of social supports, like high-quality subsidized child care or extended parental leave, that allows them to fully go for it, and the impact this has on the scope and depth of a career is profound. Right or wrong, men plunge into their careers without much thought about how they’ll navigate the work/family balance. They assume someone — spouse, parent, paid caregiver — will materialize to take care of it (and usually someone does.) This one assumption opens up an entire world of possibility to a young person in a way that can’t be overstated.

This may be one of the most cogent explanations that I’ve read anywhere about why there are ’so few women’ in just about any field. Can you guess who said it? The answer is after the jump.

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And the answer is… Tom Colicchio, in musing about why there are so few women in the top echelons of his profession. According to Colicchio, the top chefs LIKE to hire women because:

they work hard without any of the competitive, macho bulls**t you often see among their male counterparts. The women I’ve hired help each other, don’t jockey for position, and work until they drop.

For the record, I found this over at Feminist Finance, where f.f. regularly blogs about finance in a way that makes sense to just about anyone.

Technorati Tags: top chef, feminist quotes, quotable, feminist

A Little Late on the Uptake? The NYT has picked up on the accusations that the media coverage of the Clinton campaign was sexist and are reporting on the call for a boycott of the cable networks. The news media is responding with accusations that the Clinton campaign exploited the media coverage in an attempt to buoy a flagging campaign.

Phil Griffin, senior vice president of NBC News and the executive in charge of MSNBC, a particular target of criticism, said that although a few mistakes had been made, that they had been corrected quickly and that the network’s overall coverage was fair.

“I get it, that in this 24-hour media world, you’ve got to be on your game and there’s very little room for mistakes,” Mr. Griffin said. “But the Clinton campaign saw an opportunity to use it for their advantage. They were trying to rally a certain demographic, and women were behind it.

Katharine Q. Seelye and Julie Bosnan go on to report that the Democratic Party is taking up the banner, and calling for a “national discussion” of sexism.

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic Party, who says he was slow to pick up on charges of sexism because he is not a regular viewer of cable television, is taking up the cause after hearing an outcry from what he described as a cross-section of women, from individual voters to powerful politicians and chief executives.

“The media took a very sexist approach to Senator Clinton’s campaign,” Mr. Dean said in a recent interview.

“It’s pretty appalling,” he said, adding that the issue resonates because Mrs. Clinton “got treated the way a lot of women got treated their whole lives.”

And perhaps it’s so hard for many to see for that very reason?

And speaking of media coverage… Fox News has done it again. Right on the heels of the “terrorist fist jab”, a Fox News producer showed incredibly poor judgment (and that’s using the kindest interpretation). In a segment about Obama supporters demanding better treatment for Michelle Obama, the cable news network flashed a chyron that described her as “Obama’s Baby Mama”. A Fox exec told Michael Calderone over at Politico that a producer used poor judgment, but others are charging the network with more race-baiting. Over at TIME, James Poniewozik gave in to temptation and went for the easy rhyme with his post “Obama Baby Mama Drama“, but put out a different explanation:

Now, throughout the primary season, through Fox’s wallpapering of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s “God damn America” clip and so forth, I’ve resisted the charge that Fox is out and out race-baiting Obama. It’s a heavy accusation for one thing, and I don’t like to get into the mind-reading business. It’s possible, I suppose, that you can attribute this incident to the general, lame fascination in both the MSM and blogs with the fact that “Obama” rhymes with “mama.” (To which fascination, the title of this post attests, Tuned In itself is not immune.)

Race baiting, actually, may be the kinder accusation to throw at Fox, because the alternative is that it’s simply laughably clueless and out of touch for an organization whose job involves, like, knowing things.

The terrorist comment—for which Hill later apologized—could be part of some deliberate strategy to use hip-hop-associate gestures and language brand Obama as “other” in the public mind. It could be the unintended product of a mindset that simply sees Obama as other. It could be coincidence. It could be none of the above….

But however you slice it, it’s simply clueless—clueless not just about the meaning of the cultural symbols, but clueless about where and what America is right now. (And clueless in a way that is probably as much generational as racial.)

Michelle Malkin, conservative blogger who was on the air at the time the controversial chyron was shown, addressed the furor over at Salon on her blog, lending credence to the ‘clueless’ theory and making reference to the most common retort among blog responses to the Fox News gaffe:

I did not write the caption and I was not aware of it when it ran (the Baltimore studio doesn’t have a monitor). I don’t know if the caption writer was making a lame attempt to be hip, clueless about the original etymology of the phrase, or both. But I do know that it was Michelle Obama herself who referred to Barack as her “baby’s daddy” and has used the phrase “baby daddy” to describe Barack while on the stump this year.

In the It’s About Time department It’s taken four seasons, but it finally happened. The latest Top Chef winner is a woman. 31 year old Stephanie Izard is a Chicago native, so the win, which netted her $100,000 along with the title of Top Chef, is especially sweet. In an interview Thursday, Izard said she felt she was “representing” her gender in a male-dominated industry. Back in April, Jennifer Frey asked, “Does anyone see any of these women storming in to take over this thing? Or are we already at a place where it’s clear-cut the boys rule the house?” But even as she wondered, she’d already picked out the winner, calling Stephanie “our X-chromosome hope”. The “first woman ever” buzz is growing, and has been remarkably free of “she only won because…” Maybe the blog-world all read TVSquad’s Allison Waldeman:

Just to be clear, Stephanie didn’t win because she’s a woman and it was time for Top Chef to give the prize to the female of the species. This isn’t a Hillary thing, so don’t go there!

Addressing Women’s Health Care Needs A new review by the Department of Veterans Affairs states that women aren’t receiving the same quality of care as men at some of its facilities. The report was mandated by Congress in response to charges that women’s health care gets short shrift at VA health facilities. The VA’s official press release (here at Earthtimes) downplays the issue of gender disparity and headlines the story with ‘high marks’, only giving two short paragraphs to the issue.

Although screening for breast and cervical cancer for women in VA
facilities exceeds screening in private-sector facilities, women veterans lag
behind their male counterparts in some quality measurements, the report noted.

VA has already launched an aggressive program to ensure women veterans
receive the highest quality of care, including placement of women advocates in
every outpatient clinic and medical center. Health care will be a major topic
at VA’s National Summit on Women Veterans Issues scheduled for June 20-22 in
Washington.