Judge Bryan Appleyard’s comments: “A simple idea very well executed. Weather is a perennial subject for poetry. Here it is evoked almost as a conversation — both with the poet and with his house. The house ‘remembers’ and ‘begs’ while the poet is driven to introspection and prayer by the storm. Rhymically controlled and very firm in its imagery, this is a satisfying poem.”

Poem of the Year Judge Kelly Cherry’s comments: “It is the music first of all that tells me this is a poem to pay attention to. The poet varies short and long sentences, carrying the cadence of them straight through to the slant-rhyme couplet that brings the poem to completion. The diction holds steady thoughout; nothing strays beyond the tessitura of the poem. This very American poem (‘Sheetrock,’ ‘twister,’ ‘prairie boat’) adheres to a classical sense of proportion that is equally evident in the speaker’s statements. The same is true of the emotions it contains: we hear the speaker’s fear and exhilaration but also a carefully calculated self-mockery that derives from years of experience with the phenomena. (‘You can grow accustomed to storms,’ we were told in the very first line, and the poem demonstrates that you can. Accustomed, but by no means passive.) Because the self-mockery is handled lightly enough, it charms and does not depress. The poet’s gentle acceptance of the emotions stirred by the storm gives to the poem a good-naturedness that the reader feels must be inclusive: reader and poet can experience—let’s say weather—the storm together.”