Weighing Light

The fifth winner of the annual New Criterion Poetry Prize is Geoffrey Brock''s Weighing Light. From the glinting scales in a painting by Vermeer to the white lines that disappear beneath a headlight''s beam, Mr. Brock''s poems measure out the often elusive weights and distances of the known world, confronting the unruly powers that threaten his burnished surfaces. His acute observations of landscape and of the smallest gestures that pass between people give rise to affecting human dramas both stark and deeply felt. Once read, his keen perceptions—all the more striking for the expertly cadenced music of his language and his supple use of poetic form—will be long remembered.