Congratulations to our 2012 Music as Muse Poetry Prize winner, Alice Frederick.
Alice Frederick is a senior at Keystone School, where she is an active third-year member and editor of the school's Literary Magazine. She devoted three weeks this past sumer to a Creative Writing course as part of the Educational Program for Gifted Youth at Stanford University. In addition to writing, Alice stays involved with the student body as president of the Keystone chapter of the National Honor Society and as a four-year Student Council Representative for her class. She has served as vice president of Spanish Club and participates heavily in Keystone's theater program. Alice also avidly pursues music as Student Leader of the Junior Tuesday Musical Club, violinist in the Youth Orchestras of San Antonio, and co-founder of her school's a cappella group, the Keytones.
This year, our judge in poetry was Lloyd Schwartz, author of the poetry collections Cairo Traffic and Goodnight, Gracie. Schwartz was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music Criticism for his work with the Boston Phoenix. Of Alice Frederick's poem, Schwartz wrote: "'The Allegory' is a mysterious, scary poem about looking for a path to some kind of answer and not quite finding one, just as Charles Ives does in "The Unanswered Question." It's a poem about mystery, and the image of trying to find one's way through a cave seems a perfect way to convey this effort. This is a very well-written, intriguing, and sophisticated poem--and meets its challenge superbly."