What prizes of an intramural sort, small or large, are offered these days at the University of Chicago?
Long ago I garnered something called the Florence James Adams Prize for Excellence in Artistic Poetry Reading. Well, it was only third place, but it was worth a hundred bucks. Twenty or so of us read in Bond Chapel for about five minutes or so each from whatever selection of poems we chose to make. I chose poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins, W.H. Auden, John Crowe Ransom and Philip Larkin. One of the judges was Karl Weintraub himself. Another was Robert Pinsky, a young instructor with few poems then to his credit who stayed at Chicago for only a year but later carved out quite a career for himself. The audience was not in the hundreds, but they listened attentively. Norman Maclean had recommended having a go at this, and he was right. It would have been satisfying even without the prize money. I must have spent most of the dough at Jimmy’s, but in due course the accolade appeared on my transcript. It all amounted to a small but sweet adjunct to a Chicago education.
Does that prize still exist? What other prizes does the University give its undergraduates?