Judge David Kirby’s comments: “What a time, what a place -- and while the time has changed, the place is still riven by a conflict that looks as though it will never have an end. There’s only one stance for a writer to take, and that’s a stoic one. So much ink has been spilled over the Mideast, and much of it amounts to emotional pornography, that is, an unearned excitement that leaves one feeling drained yet sickly. That’s not the case with this poem. Here the poet speaks calmly and laconically and in a way that is so much louder than any bombast could ever be.”