The Banta Award 1982
Hang Me Up My Begging Bowl
by Chad Walsh
Swallow Press, 1981

The 1982 Banta Award BOOK
Hang Me Up My Begging Bowl represents a collection of 48 poems divided into seven sections. In his "Notes on the Poems" the author acknowledges a month's residence at Yaddo in 1970 as the time when many of the poems were begun or completed. Many of the poems have appeared separately in such diverse publications as the New York Times, New Republic, Arizona Quarterly, Anglican Theological Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Nation, Prairie Schooner, Christian Century, and Chicago Tribune.

In a technical postscript to this collection, the poet discusses his concern in 1969 that form was becoming an end in itself. In those years, he was engaged in going on poetry tours and began to be more aware of the oral-aural nature of poetry. For two years, he dictated poems "as they welled up from somewhere" into a tape recorder. He discovered "that spontaneity is long-winded!" He also found he had a handful of "tape poems" he liked in which he had paid little conscious attention to discernible meter, stanza form or rhyme. Some are scattered throughout this collection, especially in the third section. A newly-inverted form, which he named "quinta rima triplicata" served Chad Walsh well for short, three-stanza poems which came rather like sonnet sequences, even though, as he says, it is a shaggier form. All in all, he was attempting "a fruitful blend of freedom and form."

Members of the Literary Awards Committee found the marvelous range of poems in Hang Me Up My Begging Bowl to be emotionally and intellectually challenging. The themes are universal and contemporary at the same time. At one moment, a reader may be touched and moved by a somewhat homely image and in the next, stunned and stretched by a metaphysical concept. Hang Me Up My Begging Bowl includes poetry for both the general reader and the serious reader of poetry. In this sensitive, intelligent and delightful collection, a reader finds poetic expression about building a cradle, remembering an incident with one's father, Kent State in 1970, tributes to Auden and Frost, and much, much more. The poems in the collection are diverse in mood, form and topic and are unified by depth of feeling and strength of intellect.

The AUTHOR
Chad Walsh

Chad Walsh was born in South Boston, Virginia, on May 10, 1914, the son of William Ernest and Katie (Wrenn) Walsh. He graduated from the University of Virginia with an A.B. degree in 1938. from the University of Michigan with an A.M. degree in 1939 and a Ph.D. in 1943. Dr. Walsh was ordained a priest of the Episcopal Church in 1949. In 1945 he came to the Beloit College faculty in Beloit, Wisconsin, where he subsequently served as professor of English, department chair, writer-in-residence and co-founder of the Beloit Poetry Journal. He was a Fulbright lecturer in Turku, Finland, in 1957-58, and Rome, Italy, in 1962. He has received honorary degrees from Rockford College and St. Norbert College. Among his many literary honors he was named a "Notable Wisconsin Author" in 1977 by the Literary Awards Committee of the Wisconsin Library Association.

Dr. Walsh has many published works to his credit including literature in several genres, literary criticism, and theology. They include C.S. Lewis: Apostle to the Skeptics, MacMillan, 1949; The Unknowing Dance, Abelard, 1964; The End of Nature, Swallow Press, 1969; and The Literary Legacy of C.S. Lewis, Harcourt, 1979. The anthology of contemporary poetry he edited has been a standard text in many colleges.

Chad Walsh divides his time between residences in Beloit, Wisconsin, and Richmond, Vermont. He is married to Eva May (Tuttle) Walsh. They are the parents of four children.

Please send Committee questions to: : Chair
> Send webpage questions to: Webmaster
Last Updated: 05/12/04
Copyright 2003 The Wisconsin Library Association, Inc.