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.