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Doug, I must say I'm not entirely surprised Michael Palmer received such an award, though I bet as deliberately-styled businessmen poets both Dana Gioia and Ted Kooser feel they would have been a more appropriate choice for the Wallace Stevens Award. It really comes down to who the judges were and even on the AAP site I can't find a listing of those presiding in 2006. But take a look at previous panels and you'll find that the choices for certain years become understandable in terms of personal taste and whether a majority might agree to share the taste of the initiator: http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/107 I was stunned when Jackson MacLow won this award in 1999, but now I'd bet that Marjorie Perloff, Robert Creeley, and John Yau simply outnumbered Frank Bidart & Sharon Olds, then one of the three brought up JML's name, and the other two agreed that he was neglected and deserving. I wonder what would happen to the virtually unquestioned prestige of literary awards within the "school of quietude" if every aspect of the decision-making process were transparent (i.e., recorded)? Barry