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Week 17.1 "Salad Days"
Mar. 7th, 2019 01:42 pmIdol Mini-Season 2018-19
Week 17.1
Topic: Salad Days
PoFest!
Steve Larkin was thrilled to be chosen to write a poem for the prestigious 3rd Annual Salinas Poetry Festival. PoFest was billed as the largest gathering of poets in the western part of California’s Central Valley. Its location in the always-exciting city of Salinas made it a poetry-lover’s favorite. Since Salinas Valley was the Salad Bowl of the World, this year’s theme was “Lettuce.”
“I’ve dedicated my life to the Muse,” Steve thought after receiving his invitation. “It’s about time I got some recognition.” He quickly agreed to attend.
He knew that, as a professional poet, there would be no fortune, but he had counted on a little fame.
“The fruits of my labors are finally starting to bloom,” he told his mother, casually mixing metaphors in his distinctive Larkin style, effortlessly using just the right cliché. Even in everyday speech, Steve displayed the depths of his poetic talents.
The invitation stated that his accommodations for PoFest would be at the luxurious Good Nite Motel in Salinas, with a 10% discount for overnight guests. It was only a mile from Hiram Moore High School, home of the Mighty Combines, where PoFest would be held.
“Remember when Alex Trebek said that Hiram Moore invented the first combine harvester in 1885,” he told his mother, dazzling her with his command of useless knowledge. “The school’s mascot is an International Harvester combine, which drives around the field at football games.”
As a poet, he sought inspiration from a variety of sources, and he had always found “Jeopardy!” to be a font of . . . . He didn’t know exactly what a font was, but it sounded good and he had once started a poem about host Alex Trebek’s mustache that his mother had liked: “O gray furry lip!/O nose about to drip!/Hanky! Hanky!” That was as far as he’d gotten, but it was a good beginning.
Steve did not have to wait long for PoFest. He had received his invitation a week before it began. It was a two-day “Versetravaganza!” celebrating poetry in West Central California, well-known for its flourishing poetry scene. It was the brainchild of Bill Williams, an English teacher at Hiram Moore. It featured workshops on writing poetry and culminated with a reading of an original poem by a real poet and the crowning of the Poetry Queen.
“We hope you’ll favor us with a new poem for the occasion,” Williams had told Steve during a telephone call. “Something that fits in with our Lettuce theme.”
“Not a problem,” Steve had replied. “When the Muse strikes, I can crank out a poem quicker than . . . something.”
Clearly, he had not wanted to waste words on anything as mundane as a telephone conversation.
“Lettuce . . . bet us . . . wet us,” he had thought, his fertile mind already turning out rhymes, even without the help of his Rhyming Dictionary. “Puss” had also popped up, but with his keen poetic sensibility, he had rejected it because it had only one syllable.
“I have several days,” he had thought. “There’s always haiku if I get stuck.”
The day before PoFest opened, Steve drove from his home in Coalinga to Salinas, spending the time deep in thought. “Salinas is home to lettuce./I’m going there to get us” was as far as he could get, but he was pleased with his efforts.
“The rest will come if I don’t think about it,” he thought, as he arrived at the Good Nite Motel.
As a featured poet at PoFest, Steve had his pick of rooms, and there were many to pick from.
“I need something quiet, away from the others,” Steve told the desk clerk.
“No problem,” she said. “Will that be hourly?”
“I’m here for PoFest,” Steve replied.
“Right,” replied the clerk with a wink. “Here’s the key to Room 47. I’ll send ‘Poe’ up when he gets here. But we don’t allow ravens anymore. Too damn noisy.”
The room was about what Steve expected for $35. The sheets and towel were suspect but the plumbing functioned, as did the sole light bulb hanging from the ceiling. He heard a little scurrying when he opened the door, but didn’t see anything. There was a desk with a few cigarette scars, so he could continue his writing.
Steve needed to get to work. “Poems don’t write themselves,” he sighed, despite his past use of poetry-assistance apps to help him through some rough parts. He brought his laptop with him, but he preferred paper and an old-fashioned fountain pen.
“Just like Emily Dickenson,” he thought, as he laid out his supplies on the desk.
She had been a particular favorite of Steve’s ever since Alex Trebeck had told him that only 12 of her 1,800 poems had been published in her lifetime.
“If I can just get six more poems published,” he thought, “I’ll be better than her!”
The prospect of being better than Emily Dickinson occupied Steve until it was time to go to bed.
He still was not worried the next morning. His poem was not due until tomorrow. Right now, he was eager to get to PoFest and see what the fuss was all about.
It was an easy walk to Hiram Moore High School, a large run-down building with an immaculate football field. A paper banner over the entrance read “Welcome to the Salinas Valley Poetry Festival!” A smaller sign directed him to the school gym, a spacious, modern building with a sign-in table manned by none other than Bill Williams, director of the event.
“You must be Steve Larkin,” said Williams with a smile. “I’m glad you could make it! We’re all looking forward to your new poem.”
He escorted Steve inside and handed him a program of events, then returned to his post at the door. There were to be presentations on poetic meter and form; how to get your poem published; the fate of poetry in the modern world; internet self-publishing and blogs, and many other topics.
The event was crowded with poets and groupies, as well as the merely curious. There were numerous tables to meet celebrity poets, representatives from various poetry magazines, and everything a writer or fan would want, with readings throughout the day from various authors. It was clear that PoFest was a success and was growing out of its humble beginnings.
Steve’s name appeared on the second page of the program. At the conclusion of the festival tomorrow, the Poetry Queen would be crowned and Steve would read his poem as the Honored Poet, to be followed by a writers-only dinner.
He had a wonderful day. PoFest lived up to his expectations as he got to meet fellow writers, all struggling in anonymity to create poetry despite an indifferent and mocking world unable to see their genius, overwhelmed by a flood of pedestrian prose.
“Why should those bozos make millions of dollars writing the same vampire $@!# when I have to serve coffee for a living?” complained one author. “We can take your breath away in 25 words if you’d just read us!”
But a day absorbed in poetry did not bring Steve any closer to writing his own; he was running out of time and starting to panic.
Back at the motel that night, he stared at the same blank piece of paper. “Bus . . . cuss . . . Lexus” filled his mind, but not his soul.
“I just can’t write about lettuce,” he finally admitted. “Perhaps an homage? Something short?”
He opened up his laptop and started browsing through his favorite poems.
“Why not William Carlos Williams? That should please Bill Williams.”
The Green Salad
so much depends
upon
a bowl of green
salad
glazed with salad
dressing
beside the white
bread.
As much as Steve liked the result, he was afraid his audience wouldn’t understand the difference between an homage and plagiarism. He knew he had to try again.
“Where’s that Larkin magic?” he asked himself.
But . . . nothing. He sat there, staring at the computer, getting more desperate by the minute. The glow of the computer was becoming irresistible. Steve knew he shouldn’t do it, but he finally couldn’t help himself.
“I promised myself I’d never use it again, but I can’t let PoFest down,” he thought. “Just one more time.”
He did what he had to do. His pride and self-respect were gone, but an hour later he had his poem.
Steve hated the second day’s events. He felt that everyone knew his secret, and he felt dirty.
“It’s not like some of them aren’t users,” he thought. “They’ll understand.”
The day dragged on. Finally, it was time to crown the Poetry Queen – the school principal’s daughter, for the third year in a row. It was her only condition for allowing them to use the gym.
It was time for Steve to read his poem. The gym was packed, and everyone was expecting a masterpiece. He walked across floor to the podium, dreading the moment. He pulled a crumpled sheet of paper out of his pocket, took a big drink of water, and read.
“Salad Days
Rotten radishes, however hard they try,
Will always be red.
Are you upset by how chromatic they are?
Does it tear you apart to see the rotten radishes so flushed?
A sweet salad, however hard it tries,
Will always be fresh.
Left untossed is just the thing,
To get me wondering if the sweet salad is stale.
Grown from dirt, is a potato salad.
Potatoes are smaller. potatoes are immature,
potatoes are small-minded, however.”
Steve looked out at the silent faces, waiting to be denounced. There was only silence. Then the worst thing happened – the gym exploded in cheers and applause. They loved it.
Steve’s shoulders slumped and his head drooped in shame. He walked away from the podium, straight out the door and back to his room. He skipped the authors’ dinner at the cafeteria. His sudden disappearance added to the mystique of Steve Larkin.
“I’ve got to get rid of the evidence,” was his only thought as he entered his room. His computer was sitting on the table, mocking him. Steve picked up the chair and smashed it. The violence made him feel better, so he packed and left.
“No one must ever know that that miserable poem was written by a poetry program,” he thought. “I just plugged in “lettuce,” and out it came. It might as well be Vogon poetry.”
Steve Larkin, poet, was never heard from again. He never wrote another line.
Back home, he packed all his poems in a box and put it in the attic, where they were touched only by Time and regret.
Deciding that he had already lost his soul, Steve applied for and was accepted at a law school. He became a successful, unhappy lawyer, who continued to watch “Jeopardy!” with his mother. No longer moved to poetry by Alex Trebek’s mustache, Steve dozed alongside his mother, dreaming of a different life.
* * * * * *
Just what you want at the end of a story: Notes!
“The Red Wheelbarrow,” by William Carlos Williams.
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Steve’s poem, “Salad Days,” was written by an online poem generator. I entered the words “lettuce” and a few others, and this is what it spat out.
“Vogon poetry” appears in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams. It is considered to be the third worst poetry in the universe, and is sometimes used by the Vogons as torture because hearing it can cause intense pain.
