Alcatraz, the first winner of the Verna Emery Poetry Competition, was selected as the best of 500 manuscripts submitted to the Purdue University Press in 1991. The collection begins with "Bay Cruise," a reminiscence of the author's boat tour of San Francisco Bay on the eve of his induction physical in 1966, and ends with "Memorial," an account of the author's visit, in 1989, during free time on a job interview at the Kent State Campus, of the monument to the MD students