Boston Review, in partnership with the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center, proudly presents the winners of the 2012 “Discovery” Poetry Contest / Joan Leiman Jacobson Poetry Prizes. Now in its sixth decade, the contest recognizes and celebrates the achievements of poets who have not yet published a first book. Many of the contest’s past winners—including Mary Jo Bang, Nick Flynn, Debora Greger, and Mark Strand—have gone on to distinguished writing careers. This year’s competition received submissions from more than 700 poets, all of which were read carefully and anonymously. After deliberating, judges Tony Hoagland, Lisa Russ Spaar, and Arthur Sze awarded the prizes to Mario Chard (Campbell, CA), Rebecca Hazelton (Madison, WI), Rosalie Moffett (Lafayette, IN), and Franke Varca (New York, NY). In selecting these poems, the judges praised the verbal dexterity of the entries overall, noting that the work of these four poets in particular complemented stylistic inventiveness with matters of intellectual, emotional, and social interest. This year’s runners up are Justin Boening (New York, NY), Xavier Cavazos (Ames, IA), and Max Somers (Champaign, IL). The winners read from their poems at the Unterberg Poetry Center in New York on May 7, 2012.

—The Editors