Alice B. Fogel Wins New Music in Literature Award

Lecturer in English and New Hampshire’s Poet Laureate Alice B. Fogel recently won the Schaffner Press’ first Nicholas Schaffner Award for Music in Literature. As a result, the Press will publish her latest book, INTERVAL: Poems Based on Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” in April.

Publisher Tim Schaffner created the award to celebrate the life of his brother Nicholas, a poet, musician, biographer, and esteemed music critic. “I have created the award to celebrate his legacy in order to encourage those emerging writers whose lives and writing have been similarly influenced,” Schaffner explained.

According to Shaffner Press, INTERVAL was selected because the poetry captured not only the spirit within Bach’s music, but transformed it into a celebration of life itself, much as the “Variations” do upon the listener’s ear. “Music, a traceable construct on paper, rises off the page, passes through the senses, and leaves a lingering physical and spiritual ache beyond definition and form,” said Fogel, who has trained in classical music and hopes, through her book, to make poetry do the same.

— Mark Reynolds