In 2001, Ivan R. Dee began publication of the annual New Criterion Poetry Prize-winner. For 2004 the prize has been awarded to Deborah Warren. Ms. Warren's poems combine imagination with intelligence, music with emotional energy. The language sparkles in poem after poem. —Dana Gioia. Warren is among the very finest American poets who still observe the strictures of meter and rhyme. She informs her work with lively feeling, wit, wisdom, and memorable music; she keeps us sitting up and interested. —X. J. Kennedy.