The Incentive of the Maggot was nominated for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle poetry prize and the Lenore Marshall Prize of the Academy of American Poets, and was awarded the Larry Levis Prize given by Virginia Commonwealth University. The book was also awarded the Bakeless Prize, given by Middlebury College and the Bread Loaf Conference, for a best first-book manuscript; Robert Pinsky was the judge. Houghton Mifflin published The Incentive of the Maggot in April, 2005. Some of the poems in The Incentive of the Maggot were previously published in The New Yorker, The Threepenny Review, TriQuarterly, and Slate.
Reviews of The Incentive of the Maggot:
On Brian Brodeur’s site “How A Poem Happens,” Ron answers some questions about the making of his poem “Belgium.” Go to Brian’s archive for February 2009 to find the post.