‘Snowman’s Code’ won the 2015 Richard Wilbur Award. And the first poems are all right, most of them being competent sonnets with a strong final line or couplet – ‘On Getting a Record Player for Christmas’ strongly evoked that era when a high point of childhood was having a couple of albums that you could replay when you wanted, ending with
I memorized not only every word,
But all the scratchy silences I heard.

But gradually the collection goes downhill, into villanelles (a verse form that is exceptionally difficult to make interesting, needing the oratorical power of a Dylan Thomas), and short insights arranged on the page as though they were verse – as in the title poem, with its
Be proud of lumpy hereness,
made by hands that carry
you, scoopful by scoopful,
to this place, at this moment,
patting you into existence.

In short, though there are poems I like in this book, I didn’t find enough to justify it as a prize-winning collection.