Julie Sheehan’s Thaw is the second winner of the annual Poets Out Loud Prize for a book of poetry published each year by Fordham University Press in coordination with Fordham's Poets Out Loud program. Marie Ponsot, the judge for the 2000 Prize, chose Thaw from among nearly 500 manuscripts entered by poets from around the world. Her introduction is included in the volume.
The landscape of Thaw is America but the vast field of language is bravely Shakespearian. Sheehan's poems roil through catalpa, maurade through familial and domestic brakes, and, ultimately, brim to the top of the old earthen pot. Everywhere the poems remind that the endless—were we truly able to grasp it—would astonish. Each poem celebrates the ingredients, practice, and serving up of the fugitive mortal banquet, from pudding to bone.