Fortuitous chance and Michael Burch brought us back in touch with Tom Merrill, Lyric contributor, interlocutor, and friend of the previous editor, Leslie Mellichamp.  To add to that great pleasure, he was willing to judge the yearly awards and quarterly issue despite his busy schedule.  Much of his present poetic energy is given to work online, where you will find numerous poems and several essays at The Hypertexts. They have also appeared at an internet site bearing the United Nations logo, and at another site promoting peace.  He has sponsored, judged and won awards over the years with The Lyric.

His choices and comments are below:

Judging poetry is always an impossible job when available prizes are outnumbered by winning poems.  I found judging the Fall issue especially impossible.  Nonetheless, I somehow managed to do what could not be done, i.e. picking--as it were out of the hat of my head--a single winner from the half dozen or so I'd whittled the choice down to "Old Doggerel Verse" (my compliments to the author).

OLD DOGGEREL VERSE
Michael Ferris

He’s calloused where his elbows rub
the floor; his snout’s gone gray.
Time has worn his teeth to nubs
and gummed his vertebrae.

He doesn’t hunt.  He never did
unless the chase was cheese.
He barks at darkness and the wind.
He’s busted both his knees.

These days he gets up just to eat
and answer nature’s call.
He sits there—while I throw, entreat
and fetch his tennis ball. 

His coat falls out.  It gets re-sewn
With daily thyroid doses.
And once a month he gets a bone
to curb the halitosis. 

I’ve worried plenty through the years
on his enteric status—
He’s had me to the point of tears
with his miasmic flatus. 

(He doesn’t mind—he stands behind
Old Auden’s intuition
that every gasbag is inclined
to like his own emission.) 

In Summer, when I drive about,
I think how sweet it were
to roll my windows down without
the hurricane of fur. 

He’s lame; he smells; he sheds; he’s blind.
Of course, he’s just a mutt.
And once he goes, I know I’ll find
my freedom bracing –but 

he’s thirteen years of life to me,
the life a man pursues
and reckons retrospectively
how bad it hurts to lose.

Annual Awards

The Annual Awards fortunately allowed me to expand the winner's circle considerably:

Lyric Memorial Prize ($100): AUTUMN'S HAND...P.M. Underhill  (Fall issue)
Leslie Mellichamp Prize ($100): ANGEL TRUMPETS...Michael Ferris (Fall issue)
Roberts Memorial Prize ($100): NIGHTFALL: VICTORIA EMBANKMENT...Daniel J. Langton (Fall issue)
The New England prize ($50): SUMMER'S END (Arlette Lees Baker, Fall issue)
The Carpenter Prize ($50): VECTOR...David Kiphen (Fall issue)
Fluvanna Prize ($50): THE JILTED COPYWRITER...Gail White (Winter issue) 

Honorable Mentions (1-Year Subscription):

HOUSEKEEPING...Judith Barisonzi (Winter issue)
THE SEA DANCE...Elizabeth Stevens (Spring issue)
THE EMPTY FARM...Rick Anthony Furtak (Fall issue)
FALL...Don Thackrey (Fall issue)
THE PERSISTENCE OF VOWS...C.B. Anderson (Spring issue)
COLD SPELL...Franchot Ballinger (Winter issue)
POETS! FLEX YOUR ECONOMIC MUSCLE...Larry Turner (Winter issue)
JAPANESE BEETLES...Duane K. Caylor (Spring issue)
THE STAIN...Sandra Shaffer VanDoren (Spring issue)
CAPTAIN LUCIAN...Karen Kelsay (Fall issue)