I want to tell fellow Spherians that I won a grand prize of $20,000 in a poetry contest at the International Society Of Poets convention in Hollywood recently. More on this incredible event later. Here is the poem:


After Reading A Book Of Old Chinese Poetry, I Stay Awake Tonight And Write This Poem

A beautiful place is the little town of Claremont.
The quiet streets are lined by ancient trees.
Down the long avenues of old houses,
pepper trees, sycamores, cedars, oaks and elms,
eucalyptus, palms and jacarandas,
translate sunlight into restful shadows.
Flowers are everywhere, and citrus trees.
Lemons and oranges ornament the gardens.
Students walk by, with their books, to the colleges.
Townspeople walk together to the village.
From parks and schoolyards, children’s voices call.
Sunday mornings, churches ring their bells.
On a clear day, you can see the mountains,
where children play, in winter, in the snow,
and long trails lead to streams and waterfalls.
Deer and mountain lions roam the mountains.
Rattlesnakes doze for hours in the sun.
Some days the ponds are visited by bears
who stumble home with their bellies full of trout.
Unable to sleep, I leave my house tonight
and sit at the wooden table under the trees.
Now the winds and birds have settled, the night is still.
The owl in the cedar tree begins to bell.
Rose and jasmine burn their sticks of incense.
Moonlight falls on Claremont through the clouds.
I remember Po Chui’s poem about the cranes.
In the early dusk, down an alley of green moss,
The garden-boy is leading the cranes home.
How strange and powerful, the love of home.
Stranger still, to be alive at all,
to be anywhere, in all its endless detail,
and the millions of tiny locks that will be broken
before you can be released from where you are,
to return again forever to the place,
so many years ago, you started from,
the nothing that is everywhere but here.


------------------
Michael Creagan



[This message has been edited by Michael Creagan (edited November 29, 2002).]

Poets have Hollywood conventions and hand out $20,000 prizes for a single poem?

Michael,

Heartiest congratulations! I thought from the first, from Hotel and Taking a Walk on Sunday, that you had an unusual talent. This is enormously pleasing!

Wiley

Hi Michael,

Let me preface this by saying that I hope your good fortune is actually good fortune. I know absolutely nothing about this organization other than what I have discovered in the last couple of minutes, but when I performed a quick search on it, the first thing I found was the following.

http://windpub.org/literary.scams/update.htm

I also know nothing about "windpub.org", but I sense that perhaps all is not what it appears here. I hope that this information is wrong, however.

Good luck and best regards. If this is genuine, congratulations. If not, I encourage you to keep at it.

TN

Here's another link with info about the ISP:

http://windpub.org/literary.scams/bigmoney.htm

Jerry



[This message has been edited by Jerry H Jenkins (edited November 30, 2002).]

I have heard of this probable scam under another name -- had not heard of the ISP as such, but the basic ploy has been around for a number of years -- all that was offered before was to include "winning" poems in an anthology, then they tried to sell each author one or more copies of the book, at$50 per. They advertise in local newspapers-- pretty small-time compared to this, if the allegations are true.

IMO it's a pretty darn good poem, anyway, Michael....

http://www.writersweekly.com/warnings/poetry.html
http://www.sykografix.com/articles/article3/

Well, none of these articles seems to say that they don't pay off on their first prizes. The complaint seems to be that they also rip off thousands of people by pretending to grant them a pub credit but really they're just selling them an expensive, vanity anthology. I'd be curious to hear whether Michael has received his check for $20,000 yet. Also, if the answer is yes, I'd be curious why Michael has chosen to share his news with us in only his second ever post on Erato.

I wasn't too impressed when I first read this.
I disliked the opening inversion, and thereafter found it lyrical but 'telly' to excess; as if written by somebody with talent, but a stranger to technique.
However, $20,000 is $20,000, and I shall amend my own style accordingly.
Regards,
David

David, Michael's technique is not yours or mine, of course, but it is a definite and deliberate style. Compare the piece above with this one, which you may have seen in the last SQ:

LOOKING FOR METAPHORS IN THE MOUNTAINS

THESE crazy birds zooming around our heads,
almost as quick as thoughts, could be our thoughts,
and so could the monstrous shadows of the clouds,
coming, like patches of night, across the mountains.
And the bushes of flowers by the fire-road
could be your dreams, dreams I want for you
when you remember this, when you are gone,
dreams that bloom all night like wildflowers.
Even here in the desert, here on this mountain,
they conjure blossoms out of earth and water,
blossoms of pink and white and blue and gold.
And no one comes to gather flowers here,
but still they labor to be beautiful,
or more amazing, labor not at all,
but simply are like this, like a burning bush
or quiet fireworks, Roman candles
always exploding, never coming down.

But don't toss over your own style -- it's good too.

W.

20K is 20K. Second-guessing the opinions of editors and judges just gets magnified when the prize is bigger.

Congrats on the prize.

Kevin

Thanks for all your kind words, Wiley, and thanks again for publishing my poems in the SQ.
Yes, I received the check at the awards ceremony at the convention. Bo Derek gave me the check and a friendly hug, and the check has cleared the bank.
I know it has been fashionable in many quarters to malign the International Society of Poets, and their poetry contests and conventions. From my observations and experience, they do some good things, and do them well. They are affiliated with a vanity press, and I'm certain they make a good deal of money from this, but I don't think any scam is involved. I went to a convention earlier this year in Orlando and won 5th prize in the poetry contest. The prize was $500. I felt like a formalist entering a bastion of free verse. I was joking that I had flown a poem in blank verse under the radar of the judges for the contest, who I assumed would not recognize blank verse if it bit them in the ass. My remarks were relayed by a mutual friend to W. D. Snodgrass who sent me a letter disabusing me of this notion. The final judge for the contest was personally known by Snodgrass, and he assured me that he was a competent poet with a doctorate in English literature, and he would certainly know exactly what he was reading and judging. The conventions have a full schedule of lectures and workshops with an impressive faculty of poets and professors. Snodgrass gave readings of his poems at both of the conventions I attended. At night, there was entertainment by the Shangri Las, the Platters, etc. At both conventions, everyone I talked to seemed to be having a great time. I know I did. I used the term, "Formalist," earlier, and I have to say here I am annoyed by this word. It seems to be a label for a card-carrying member of a disreputable political organization. I imagine a hapless poet being interrogated by an idiot repeating over and over, "Are you now, or have you ever been, a Formalist?" For the record, I write very few poems in free verse. I have since realized that the reason most of the prize winning poems have been written in free verse reflects only the preferred form by the poets entering the contest, and not a prejudice of the judges. The general quality of the poems entered in the contest is mediocre or worse, but that could also be said of most of the poems published in mainstream poetry journals. A friend asked me why I go to these conventions and I replied that it was fun to get away from my busy schedule for a few days and immerse myself in reading and writing poetry. I work long hours as a doctor in a very busy emergency room. I also enjoy being able to renew my 40 year old acquaintance with Snodrass. Now if I am asked this question again, I might be tempted to reply as Willie Sutton, the notorious bank robber, did, when asked by a journalist the probing question, "Why do you rob banks?" Willie laughed and answered, "Because that's where the money is."
I would encourage poets from the Sphere to attend one of these affairs and enter the poetry contest. It would raise the general level of poetry read there, and you might have a rewarding time.

More later,

Mike Creagan

Mike, I'm glad you received the award. Your poem isn't great, but everything's relative, and I've seen what gets published by the (Inter)national Library of Poetry and its many affiliates and aliases. Your poem is probably better than most of them.

As far as maligning the organization, I won't talk about cases of people who've tried to send in something bad enough or famous enough to not get accepted by that organization for publication in its annual anthologies (the second verse of the Star Spangled Banner or a composite poem written by second-graders) because I don't know those things to be true from personal knowledge. You can read about them as I did on the internet at sites exposing scams. I'll just tell you my own experience and why I think that organization isn't about poetry at all but about big business. Unlike poetry, it is as lucrative as anything could be, with the possible exception of the lottery.

My introduction to the National Library of Poetry came years ago when a co-worker challenged me to enter a poetry contest advertised in the newspaper: any subject, any style, but it must be no more than 20 lines. I was, ahem, a semifinalist. My poem being judged a semifinalist (said the form letter), it would be published even if I didn't buy the book, but for $49.95 I could have a lovely leather-bound volume to show to all my friends, a treasured keepsake. My co-worker's poem wasn't a semifinalist, but his form letter said that he could still get it published in the book if he ordered the book in advance, since they had some extra room. Turned out that anybody could get his poem into the book if he ordered the book in advance. Meanwhile, I was asked for permission to let them use my poem, along with a few other editor's favorites, on an audio tape read by a professional actor, and available in advance for a mere $28.95. There were other special offers, don't remember what they were, but by then I had I tumbled to the con and I threw them all in the trash. A year and a half later, when they finally got enough orders to go to press, my book arrived. My poem was one of 5,000 20-line pieces of shit crammed into a beautiful leather-bound volume that I hid behind the bookcase until garbage day. I didn't know much about poetry at that time, but I knew enough to be embarrassed to have my name in it. I still get junk mail and special invitations to their conventions as "one of their most outstanding poets." I don't think so.

Why shouldn't they have $20,000 to award as a prize, and why shouldn't they be able to hire a few actors and college professors if they want to? If they get enough suckers who are willing to pay $50 to see their piece of dreck in a book they can even afford to buy themselves some expertise in the field of poetry, and perhaps they have. After all, they are raking in millions from gullible non-poets.

I imagine a certain amount of good will and publicity promotion is expected of a grand prize winner, and even good poets are ambitious. But somehow I don't think you'll find much interest on Eratosphere.

Carol

What Carol said.

Congratulations, Michael.

Terese



[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited December 03, 2002).]

When I posted the poem, I omitted the epigraph, the first 2 lines from a poem written in China in the year 600 CE.The poem is called, Lo Yang, which then was the eastern capitol of China. The poem was written by the emperor, Wen-Ti.

A beautiful place is the town of Lo Yang.
The big streets are full of spring light.

I modeled the opening lines after this old, Chinese poem, and I have grown fond of this simple inversion, although I would not usually use a constuction like this.

Mike Creagan

What Carol said.

I had a similar experience with the same organization. Years later, I still get the occasional e-mail exhorting me to attend the award ceremony where my poem is to be read out loud by a great -- yet strangely unnamed -- poet of our time, and where I am to receive a handsome amount of money (I can't recall the exact sum, but it ended in 99 cents).

Fundamentally, this organization is not about poetry. It is about money. It is about producing and packaging poetry as a commodity.

- Fugwozzle



[This message has been edited by Fugwozzle (edited December 01, 2002).]

I never thought anyone would give me money for a poem I had written, particularly not such an incredible amount. I wouldn't want to impugn or discourage the practice however.

It was nice to see the generous congratulatory letters, but
I must say I was disgusted by the few responses that seemed
resentful and jealous. Mike Creagan's poem may not be
"Sunday Morning" or "The Star-splitter" but it's a good
poem, frankly imitating Chinese poems as envisioned for
us by Waley but full of original and touching things.
"A stranger to technique"? "Would be improved by a jaunt
on the boards"? You've got to be kidding, or else you
don't know what you're talking about. Granted, twenty
grand is amazing for a poem, any poem, and Dr Creagan was
obviously amazed, but better such manna from heaven should
fall on a good poem than on the usual shit one sees. I
won't name any of the poetasters who have won much larger
sums in recent years.

Congratulations, Michael, and I'm glad to learn of the bona fides of this outfit with respect to the money. I like to hear of large amounts of cash being associated with poetry.

Your poem has a mesmeric quality--maybe from the repetitions--vaguely like certain Longfellow lines.

Jealous? Indeed I am. You don't get the Platters at West Chester.

May fortune smile on you again!

Deborah

Hey Mike, I've just seen this! Wonderful stuff money, so's the poem. I keep asking when you're going to stop lurking here and start critting and posting.

Great to see the flag flying so proudly;

Jim

Well, the Willie Sutton argument convinces me that this is something to look into, not to mention the hug from Bo Derek (who must still be at least an "8"). And what you said about Snodgrass lends a comforting legitimacy, as well.

Since it seems that the same group of organizations also runs a vanity scam, publishing thousands of crappy poems and selling the books to the crappy poets, that may be the reason that some of us were slow to understand that this is a legitimate contest with qualified judges who do in fact hand out the advertised prizes.

Could you post information about which of their prizes and contests are for real, and which are vanity press scams? How much does it cost to enter? Do you have to go to the convention? Etc.

Anyway, I've looked back over your poem, and while I don't find it to be worth $900 a line, it is certainly worth two free contributors' copies in many good magazines. I hope you find the time between ruptured spleens and GSW's to stop by and participate on our poetry boards from time to time.

Holy guacamole!!
Twenty thousand dollars?
Unbelieveable! And wonderful!
Very very happy for you, Michael!

Who's next, I wonder?!

---Pua

Michael said:

I used the term, "Formalist," earlier, and I have to say here I am annoyed by this word. It seems to be a label for a card-carrying member of a disreputable political organization. I imagine a hapless poet being interrogated by an idiot repeating over and over, "Are you now, or have you ever been, a Formalist?"

Michael, I imagine most of the formalists here are rather proud to be known as formalists. I certainly am: I've spent many years of my life doing this kind of work and no longer give a damn what other poets or anomalies don't respect it. Every now and then, like this afternoon, I run into an old friend who has been writing song lyrics all his life and he is amazed to learn there is such an entity as a Neoformalist movement. This friend said "Hallelujah! You mean we're not alone?!"

Terese

I am a "Formalist," as I guess you use the term. I write very few poems in free verse. And yes, I like the company of poets who are interested in matters of technique and form. That's how I found my way here. But all poets are, for better or worse, formalists in a larger sense. I remember something Henri Coulette wrote about himself: "I consider myself a maker, not a Bard, with all that that implies." Anyone who wants to make poems is using "form, either well or badly. In order to write well, you have to know, simply, everything, about the art. Good poems can be written in free verse, of course, but they still have to be made artfully. I guess I was just being a wiseass when I was writing the stuff you were quoting above.

Here is a poem I wrote recently for one of our really accomplished members, Bob Mezey, until recently a neighbor of mine in Claremont . He has moved to the other side of the country, and I miss him. I think the poem will show my feelings about "form" better than an essay.

To A Dear Friend Who Is Living Far Away

after an ancient Chinese poem by Po Chui

Only a year ago, I met a friend,
a master in the art of poetry.
I had been reading his books since I was young
and many of the poems I knew by heart.
My poems were clearly the work of an apprentice
but he was kind and generous to me
and welcomed me as a fellow in the art.
Many the hours we charmed with talk of verse.
We quoted favorite lines to one another,
often the other's favorites as well.
Some well-loved poems we would recite together
as if we were chanting scripture, or a prayer.
Long ago, a poet friend once asked him,
"How many people in the world tonight
are thinking about the meters?" We thought about them,
we talked about them. Hell, we reveled in them,
with the love that masquerades as pure technique.
I think back often to the night we met
and started talking about poetry.
The doors of Heaven opened in my mind.
I would have laughed, had someone told me then
that after only one brief year had gone
I would be struggling with how to say farewell
to someone I had simply grown to love
as a father, brother, teacher and dear friend.
His house is sold. He is living far away.
Tonight I dreamed that he was back in Claremont
and I saw again the face of an old friend.
He seemed to be saying that nothing had really changed.
Words can travel at the speed of light
and we will go on talking as before.
I woke up and thought he was still talking to me.
I turned on the light. There was no one there at all.
On a night like tonight, missing his company,
I will sit at my wooden table under the trees.
A candle will illuminate the page
on which I'll write some words to send to him,
hoping to make him smile, and touch his heart.


I don' t know how to italicize on these posts. "How many
people in the world tonight are thinking about the meters?" is something Henri Coulette said. "The love that masquerades as pure technique " is a line from a poem by Donald Justice. "Hell, we reveled in them," is an imitation of something Robert Frost said. Mezey, Justice, Coulette, and Frost--what a fine company of poets. I like to think of them as great poets, rather than thinking of them as great "Formalists." Of course it goes without saying that all of them are masters of the formal aspects of our ancient art.



[This message has been edited by Michael Creagan (edited December 04, 2002).]

I'm glad that Dr. Creagan has disclosed that Dr. Mezey is his "dear friend." I had been rather confused by the suggestion that David Anthony, an accomplished poet in his own right, doesn't "know what he was talking about" because he dared to criticize the "technique" of the winning poem, or that those who don't admire the poem as much as Dr. Mezey are "resentful and jealous," but these unfortunate remarks obtain the rank of virtue when seen in the light of friendship.

Still, isn't anyone the least bit concerned about the kind of story that Carol Taylor told, about how these organizations manipulate, deceive and ultimately embarrass thousands of people who are scammed into buying a vanity publication? It's nice for those who reap a windfall, especially if they write great poems, but one need be neither "resentful" nor "jealous" to raise an eyebrow at the prospect of competing for money that comes from such activities.

Personally, I'm much more jealous of the $2 per line that Dr. M has often received from Poetry than I am of the $900 per line that Dr. C got from poetry.com.

I calculate it at $555.56 per line, but let it pass, let it pass...

Michael

Congratulations on the award. I doubt any of us would have turned down the honor, especially with such a cash award.

I haven't had any contact with vanity press or organizations like the ISP, so I'm in no position to criticize or legitimize them. If someone wants to pay $50 to see their name in print, that's their business and I see nothing wrong with it. As long as they're realistic about it. I never doubted a cash award was given to someone. There are federal organizations, as well as state agencies, who keep track of contests and keep them legal.

What does bother me, however, is what can happen to someone who's not aware of how these contests work. Take for example, SnowAngel, the fourteen year old who posted here several months ago, believing herself to be a fantastic poet with natural greatness - and proceeded to tell everyone. After all, she had been named a winner in just such a competition - and been told how she was one of their best poets. Everyone else here, of course, was just jealous...well, you get the picture.

Eventually, I believe, she investigated the contest and realized what it was about. Not only was she hurt, but when she came back here in earnest, few people were willing to take a chance on critting her again.

How many people go through this kind of build-up, only to end up having reality smacking them painfully in the chops? I don't know, but it seems to me that this one was enough.

Do these organizations lie? I highly doubt it. Do they deceive people? Yes. Is it ethical? Each person has to answer that one themselves. It would have been interesting had we critiqued your piece prior to learning of the award. No one, I think, could do it as objectively now.

Being the suspicious sort, I must honestly say I'm curious why someone whom I've never seen post here come on, refer to us as 'fellow Spherians' and announce his good fortune, if not to enlist others to pay up and submit. I hope you will understand that people who don't know you may take it the wrong way.

Enjoy the money, and I look forward to your participation here, which I'm sure will allay any suspicions even the worst of us may have.

Jerry

Roger, I don't think you can have seen many lines of mine
in Poetry---except for a couple of the Borges translation I
did with Dick Barnes, I don't think I've published anything
there in 30 or 40 years. (Of course, given my aging memory,
I may be wrong.) In fact, the editor, Mr. Parisi, in a fit of irrational rage that still makes no sense to me, told me about
eight or nine years ago that I would never ever publish any- thing in Poetry again. You can imagine how many sleepless nights that caused me.
By the way, I'm not a Dr, neither a real doctor like Mike Creagan or a doctor of philosophy, literature etc. All I have is a BA. When students called me Dr, I told them to take two
aspirin and call me next semester.

Mr. Mezey (but it's still "Dr." to many of us), I've seen your name in so many books and journals and anthologies over the years that I would have bet all my future prize money from poetry.com that you were a frequent contributor to Poetry. The good news for the rest of us is that your banishment from Poetry opens up an additional page or two where we might fantasize our poems could reside, but the bad news is that Poetry won't be as much fun to read.

Dear Mr. Mezey,

Roger has put that very nicely,
but now...we just GOTS to know:
please, please, please tell us whatever
on earth it might have been that led
Parisi to such extremes. Surely there
is a juicy story here? Can't you at least
feed us a few more crumbs?

Brief digression: Might not we, as presumptive logophiles, employ "jealous" for a feeling about something we nominally possess and are afraid of losing and "envious" for something someone else has and we have not but wish we had? I know some dictionaries allow "envious" as a sub-sub synonym for "jealous," but I think that's only to recognize a frequent confusion of the two words.

Doctor Michael, I'm envious AND I'm jealous, and I tender you my heartiest congratulations. Your winnings surpass by a factor of four my lifetime earnings from po biz. And by a factor of two Alan's advance for the Beowulf, which worked out to about $3 per line. Given that he slaved all day for a year to complete what I foolishly started, he made about five bucks an hour.

I join with Len in beseeching Professor Mezey to tell us what so pissed off Parisi. The guy's taste is so wildly uneven I've never sent him anything, but now that he has $100 million, he might be a good friend to have.

Michael, are you imitating one of Po Chu-i's poems for Yuan Chen? Long time since I read Waley.

Personally, I'm not jealous or envious. But boy am I covetous!

Anyway, Golias, I checked my usual usage manuals and dictionaries but didn't find anything discussing the distinction you would draw. Can you point us to any source for what you're saying?

And Tim, at least Alan seems to have gotten more than Poetry's $2 a line, though just barely. Not to mention (no kidding) the glory of it all.

Thanks Tim, for your friendly words. Yes, this is the poem by Po Chui, translated by Waley, far and away the best translator of Chinese poetry.

Dreaming That I Went With Li And Yu To Visit Yuan Chen


At night I dreamed I was back in Chang-an;
I saw again the faces of old friends.
And in my dreams, under an April sky,
They led me by the hand to wander in the spring winds.
Together we came to the ward of Peace and Quiet;
We stopped our horses at the gate of Yuan Chen.
Yuan Chen was sitting all alone;
When he saw me coming, a smile came to his face.
He pointed back at the flowers in the western court;
Then opened wine in the northern summer-house.
He seemed to be saying that neither of us had changed;
He seemed to be regretting that joy will not stay;
That our souls had met for only a little while,
To part again with hardly time for greeting.
I woke up and thought him still at my side;
I put out my hand; there was nothing there at all.

A beautiful poem, I think, and much better than mine.


Here is another, the one I quote in the poem that has caused such a firestorm.

The Cranes

The western wind has blown but a few days;
Yet the first leaf already flies from the bough.
On the drying paths I walk in my thin shoes;
In the first cold I have donned my quilted coat.

Through shallow ditches the floods are clearing away;
Through sparse bamboos trickles a slanting light.
In the early dusk, down an alley of green moss,
The garden-boy is leading the cranes home.

Thanks again.

Mike Creagan






[This message has been edited by Michael Creagan (edited December 05, 2002).]

Michael, Suggest you acquire a copy of Three Chinese Poets, by Vikram Seth. The poets are Wang Wei, Li Po, and Tu Fu; and the translations to my ear are better than Waley's. Amazon has a used copy of this out-of-print little treasure.

Thanks Tim. I was unaware of Seth's translations and will try to find them.

Mike Creagan

This is becoming a somewhat narcissistic thread with oriental trimmings; so, I present my most narcissistic piece with oriental trimmings.

Sigmoidoscopy

"He who having used the outer light
and can return to the inner light
is thereby preserved from all harm."
Lao Tzu


She said an artist would love this,
the gastroenterologist.
What, the entry or the exit?
This Ansel Adams of the anus
-- connoisseur of inscapes, pink, horizonless --
probes, probes, and probes,
blasting air into the tunnel
to illuminate its turns,
the slick translucencies
that wall the creeping capillaries
straining to be purple on my palette.

Doctor, are those yellow spots corn?

No, she answers, this looks terrific,
they're just pieces of fecal matter.

Never did I dream that fecal matter
would highlight the only
film in which I've starred:
Clawson, in His Own Colon,
for fifteen minutes famous,
but alone, so alone,
on the outside looking in.

Bob, a pentrating poem indeed!

Though I'm a bit confused why you posted it here, I will join the bandwagon just to let you know you are not alone. What I recall from my own s-oscopy was the bedside manner of my doctor's assistant, who had me thinking pleasant thoughts to distract me. She said stuff like:

Just try to let your mind go free.
Imagine a pleasant spot.
And thus your sigmoidoscopy
will quickly be forgot.

Imagine lounging on a beach.
Then do not look behind!
And thus whatever’s in your breach
won’t enter in your mind.

Pretend you hike along a trail
beside a gorgeous lake.
And thus forget inside your tail
there wags a metal snake.


Would you print this in a book if I promise to buy a copy?

I seem to recall poems like this on the "Fun" board, under a thread called "You can't write about that".