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.