Jennifer Clarvoe’s Invisible Tender is the first winner of the annual Poets Out Loud Prize for a book of poetry published each year by Fordham University Press in coordination with Fordham’s Poets Out Loud program. Poet J.D. McClatchy, the judge for the 1999 Prize, chose Invisible Tender from among nearly 500 manuscripts entered by poets from around the world. His introduction is included in the volume.

The poems collected in Invisible Tender chart the terrains of childhood recollection and adult loss, of meditation and celebration. Intensely lyrical, both employing and altering traditional poetic meters and forms, Clarvoe’s poems are rich in philosophical reflection in subjects ranging from art and, popular culture to the elusive languages of the natural world.