Thanks to Ezra Pound, the U.S. government has been fearful of poetry awards for more than 40 years. But thanks to a romance between Lyndon Johnson's sister and a fellow student amid the filing cards of the Library of Congress, that is about to change.
Pound was the last American poet to receive an official national prize for his work. After he was awarded the 1948 Bollingen Prize, given by the Library of Congress, for "Pisan Cantos," a controversy erupted over the bestowal of government approval on a man who had been indicted for treason and detained for pro-Italian activities during World War II. Congress soon moved to forbid the library from awarding prizes, and the Bollingen was passed on to Yale University.But this October, the library will re-enter the realm of poetry prizes with the first $10,000 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry. The award will be for a new book of poetry, and like the Bollingen will be given every two years.