Dilemma: Poems

Winner of the 2026 Vanderbilt University Literary Prize, Jane Huffman’s Dilemma explores the strange connection between thinking and living. “The dilemma / is one of expression,” the speaker acknowledges early in the collection, spurring Huffman’s investigation into the uncanny asymmetries, collaborations, and co-morbidities that exist across the trinity of reading, writing, and living. Several poems take works of literature as their point of departure, creating a kind of literary ekphrasis in which reading becomes a form of response. Elsewhere, experiences of respiratory illness, OCD, caretaking, addiction, and recovery become occasions for examining the unstable borders between body and mind.

Wry and philosophically curious, the poems in Dilemma unfold at a pace compressed and unusual, playful yet emotionally exact. Huffman continually surprises readers with the possibilities of language while highlighting the difficulty of simply being alive.