The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual contender. Granting Iris the attention he haplessly courted all his life, Abbott discovers a forger of fame whose story provides a commentary, often parodic, on the place of poetry in his time.Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis. Examining Iris's grandiose fantasy, Abbott exposes his forgery, plagiarism, and imposture. Iris's self-projection as a neglected poetic genius often was designed to translate into monetary value, while confirming his role behind the scenes of 20th-century literary history. With energy and persistance, the minor Chicago poet insinuated himself among the great and famous and simulated a life of literary stardom. Driven by ambition and narcissism, he began publishing poetry in 1905, participated in the Chicago Renaissance, and continued publishing until two years before his death in 1967. As a child, Iris had emigrated from Italy with his mother, who arrived in Chicago in pursuit of the American dream. Yeats, to one of Iris's volumes of poetry-although at the time of publication Yeats had been dead for several years. 'Of poets writing today, there is no greater,'states a preface, signed by W.B. Eliot, Robert Frost, Joyce Kilmer, Ezra Pound, Dame Edith Sitwell, Diego Rivera, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, William Wrigley, and Woodrow Wilson.

Poet, plagiarist, imposter, and forger, Iris engaged in a lifelong campaign of self-promotion that linked him to a constellation of leading writers and public figures-among them T.S. If poets are 'liars by profession,' Sharmel Iris was truly professional. 'Of poets writing today, there is no greater,'states a preface.

Forging Fame by Craig Abbott