Poetry. BEAUTY MARK, a poetry collection by Suzanne Cleary, was chosen by Kevin Prufer for the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry. BEAUTY MARK uses images and subjects drawn from American popular culture to find transcendent meanings in the natures of beauty, time, and especially, art-from the beauty mark of Miss Peggy Lee to the flavors in the Cheese-of-the-Month Club. Kevin Prufer writes, "These plainspoken poems are not merely conversational, nor are they in any way simple. Beneath their amiable, glistening surfaces are deep concerns ... mortality, those qualities that define art, and our relationship to the divine." Ilya Kaminsky writes that BEAUTY MARK "bewitches and stuns," and Denise Duhamel calls Cleary "the real deal."
