Addendum to a Miracle

Winner of the twelfth annual Anthony Hecht Prize, Addendum to a Miracle was selected by judge Gjertrud Schnackenberg, who writes in her foreword to the book: "Mike White’s short poems, sometimes no more than a single sentence, repeatedly take on, for all their brevity, like an ant carrying a leaf, a large and looming question: how could the world possibly be as it is? After choosing his manuscript, and learning his name, I looked him up on the Internet, and found his description of his love for the poetry of Issa; immediately I saw the spiritual connection. Although Mike White does not write haiku, and he is not a nature poet, and his gods, present or absent, are not Issa’s, and although his voice is a thoroughly 21st century, western voice, the lines of his spiritual descent from Issa shine clearly. White’s poems, like Issa’s, are egoless, unknowing, and profoundly surprised. Like Issa’s works of “one-breath” world-making, his poems come into existence as bubbles, momentary worlds blown into being by the breath of comedy."