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Max, Here's the official list of "NBA players & referees": Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Mark Doty, Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems (HarperCollins) Reginald Gibbons, Creatures of a Day (Louisiana State University Press) Richard Howard, Without Saying (Turtle Point Press) Patricia Smith, Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press) Poetry Judges: Robert Pinsky (chair), Mary Jo Bang, Kimiko Hahn, Tony Hoagland, Marilyn Nelson. Hard to say exactly how the 175 entrees were narrowed down to 5, but I'd take odds that Marilyn Nelson was Patricia Smith's strongest advocate. Similarly, Frank Bidart's main man must have been "he whose name is rendered inaudible by the sound of Yvor Winters turning over in his grave." If Patricia Smith wins, I wonder if the "National Book Foundation" will be ready for the "field day" journalists will have with the the topic of the relationship between journalism and poetry. Follow out the links on this subject provided by the Wikipedia entry on Patricia Smith and you'll soon realize that she might constitute the metaphorical dynamite which will blow up the foundation. I look forward to her accidental victory. In fact, I respect Allan Kornblum, her publisher at Coffee House Press. Barry Alpert