High school "poem"

[steuard]

During my senior year of high school, my English teacher required us to submit a story or poem to the school's literary magazine From the Depths. I thought the assignment was silly (and was probably pretty dismissive of the magazine, too), so I wrote a "poem" over lunch and handed it in. To the great amusement of everyone who was in on the joke, they published it. At long last, I've tracked down a copy, and I'll share it with you here:

The Myth

as I followed the stream
    down
from the mountaintop of
    which it sprang,
I knew then that my hidden
    town
was littered with the broken
    shards
of ice

cold, and colder
in the frigid dawn
    the birds flee
to their inner sanctuaries
    filled
with nothing greater than
    the sea


accord
bubbling pipes
crying out in unison
calling to the specks
hidden deep in the folds
of a wretched soul

paradoxical musings
flow relentlessly into
vortices of confusion
and fear

the fragile cup
is emptied of its tepid
    draught

Comments

[steuard.livejournal.com]

There is one other element to the story. About a month after I turned in the poem, I got a call slip (during my English class) to go talk to a teacher whose name I didn't recognize. When I got there, she explained that she was the sponsor of the magazine and that she wanted to make sure that my poem had been a serious contribution before they published it. She asked me what it meant.

I felt like a deer in the headlights. A part of me wanted to say, "Yeah, you got me," and acknowledge the joke. But it was also clear that the joke was on the brink of being entirely successful: I really did want to see that monstrosity published. Most of all, though, I was horrified by the thought that my own English teacher would find out that I'd made a mockery of her assignment (I didn't want her upset with me: she was a friend of my mother's).

So... I told her what it meant. Or rather, I looked back at the thing (which was almost as new to me as it was to her) and made up a "meaning" as I talked. I had no idea what I was going to say next (heck, I hadn't even read the next few lines of the poem yet). But apparently I was just convincing enough. (I felt horribly guilty about it afterward, though: I essentially never lie, but it was awfully hard to see what I'd told her as anything else. I justified it to myself as a necessary continuation of the hoax, but in the end it was mostly self-preservation. Not my finest moment. My friends gave me a really hard time about it, too, though they agreed that seeing the poem published made it all worthwhile.)

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

Wow, I had a very similar experience in high school, although I spent even less time and it didn't get into any kind of publication.

I had forgotten to do the current week's assignment for english class, which was to write a "concrete imagery" poem (a poem where the shape of the text matches the content of the poem). So when she said "ok, everybody pass up your homework" I said "oh shit", and reached into my bag and pulled out a blank sheet of paper. Just as the person behind me was handing me theirs, I wrote my name at the top right corner and the words "The Empty Heart" at the top middle and put it in the stack.

I figured there was almost no chance I would get any credit for it, but at least I would get a smile out or a witty comment back. To my great surprise, I got it back the following week with a big red "A" at the top and the words "very clever!" written next to it.

[akjdg.livejournal.com]

In high school, the kids with an eye to college and funding filled out 'scholarship books' where we di a bunch of stuff for the various local scholarship giving entities. I got interviewed by the rotary club, and the interview committee was enthralled by the essay I wrote for them, and asked me what had inspired me to write it. Having written that essay (and countless others) months prior, I had to tell them I had no clue what I wrote or why.

I guess honesty was worth something in their minds, because they awarded me a scholarship regardless.

[kirin]

Ok, at the risk of totally missing something obvious...

Is the "joke" here just that it was written off the top of your head over lunch? Is that actually a bad thing? Is a meaning extrapolated on the fly any worse than any other meaning? What is art anyway? What is "serious"? Should I stop asking questions before this gets needlessly metaphysical?

[steuard.livejournal.com]

The "joke" here is that it's a bunch of meaningless drivel. :) I mean, "the fragile cup is emptied of its tepid draught"? That phrase would be laughably over the top except that it has no significance whatsoever. (I'm actually kinda proud of it.)

If there were some overall unifying theme or message, that would be one thing, but I intentionally wrote it to make sure there wasn't one. The lack of capitalization and the odd line breaks and indentation are just pretentious nonsense.

Nevertheless, my former-English-major mother insists that there must be deep meaning in it regardless of whether I tried to include any or not. So maybe you're onto something.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

You and Social Text, man.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Or here, how about this: http://www.codeasart.com/poetry/darwin.html