Peter Jay Shippy wins our first poetry contest (2007)

HERE'S THE CHALLENGE: 
John Lawrence Ashbery, guest editor of the inaugural volume in The Best American Poetry series in 1988, has the same middle name as an American poet of note, born in the nineteenth century, whose work appears in The Oxford Book of American Poetry. Name him and write a sonnet — rhymed or unrhymed — comparing the two poets.

Click here to read Peter Jay Shippy's winning entry selected by judge Paul Violi. -- DL