Sunrises v. Sunsets

Sunsets are a lot more attractive that sunrises. I don't understand why, but there are always, or generally, much better colors at sunset. Some people may claim that this has to do with physics, but I would argue it's just a matter of character. But I've decided I like sunrises more than sunsets, overall. Sunsets are just a little too fleeting, if you know what I mean. Sunrises are still attractive, but they seem a little more down to earth, a little more substantive, a little more encouraging. I was on the staff of the literary magazine for my high school in 2003, and mostly helped to judge the poetry and short story competitions. Let me tell you, a lot of junk gets written in high schools. The sad part is that the people who write it must feel like it's good. Anyway, I wrote two poems for the literary magazine. One because each member of the staff was asked to submit one, and one to submit to the poetry competition under a fake name. See, other staff members went around to all the English classes to announce the contest, and by the time they came to my class, they'd invented a rule that poems couldn't be about suicide. So I wrote a poem which I titled "Suicide" and submitted it under the name of Hester Nesbit. It had essentially nothing to do with death, other than that it began and ended with the line "I have no fear of death." I also submitted a story as Hester Nesbit to the short story contest, it was intentionally terrible but written in a way that the other members of the staff might think it was good. I wanted to see what they'd do with it. Unfortunately, there was only one other kid there when we judged the short stories, and he said he really liked it, but Mr. Filmore, our adviser, pointed out that it didn't have any kind of a plot in any way. And the kid said, Oh, I guess that's true. Mr. Filmore asked me what I thought about it, and I said I liked one sentence (I did) but the rest was pretty terrible (it was). Which was the end of that story. "Suicide" didn't win any prizes either, though it probably should have. It wasn't that great, but really, when 9 out of 10 poems are:

I hate the world.
Everyone else sucks.
You're all losers and
can go to hell for all
I care because you are
stupid and don't understand
me. My boyfriend said he
cared but then he was
with that slut the next
night so I just said
f*** you and flipped him
off.

Sorry for the language, but that's a direct quote. Or close enough to a direct quote to justify the language, though I did at least edit that one bit. (I really do try to be sensitive.) "Suicide" just got thrown out with these type of poems by every one else on the staff, and I couldn't say much because I didn't want Hester Nesbit to win the $20 Barnes and Noble gift certificate.

But back to sunrises - the poem I submitted under my own name was in part about a sunrise, and I titled it WINTERS COMING in all caps like that. The idea was that, given that the opening lines talked about snow, you'd initially think of the title as a possessive - Winter's coming - but then you'd realize that there wasn't an apostrophe, so maybe a direct reading, with coming serving as an adjective modifying multiple winters, could be intended. Which was about half of the poem's merit - leading thoughts from a single winter to many, from present to future. I'd reproduce the poem here, but I'd rather not. Really, I don't like it much. But get this - whoever typed up this poem for the literary magazine decided to "edit" it and corrected my title, so that in its published form, it's titled "Winter's Coming." They also changed the damns in Hester's story to darns. This only made it even worse, and it should never have been published, but they only had three or four stories submitted, so they printed them all.

The saddest thing I've ever seen in my life was an article in the Spanish Fork Press about a local woman who'd won a poetry competition. This was all fine, but when I went on to read the article, it turned out it was an online poetry contest that she'd entered, and within just a couple days she got an email announcing that she'd won and they wanted to publish her poem! She could even purchase a leather bound, archival quality volume with gold-colored edging featuring her poem with the other winners! And she could purchase multiple copies to give to her friends and relatives so that they could recognize her achievement! And she could buy a trophy for her 1st place poem! They article featured a photo of her being (mock)presented this trophy by her son or someone. She probably also bought several copies of the book. They printed her award-winning poem, and it looked about like the kind of poem that most often wins poetry contests - really really bad, but acting like it was good. I've never claimed to be a good poet (which is probably a lie), but I've got a pretty good eye for really bad poems, and this one was among the worst. I was heart-broken to imagine her celebrating her victory and contacting the local paper to have them write a story about it. But I'm sure she's still very proud of her poem and her achievement, and has never regretted spending potentially hundreds of dollars on archival quality volumes of poetry and trophies, so there's maybe no reason to be sad at all.

This is all on my mind in part because, as Chandler pointed out, most of the poets we're likely to find in Argentina will be pretty mediocre at best. But I think the purpose isn't to find good poetry or bad poetry or to make any kind of judgment of poetry - but in sharing poetry as a way to meet random interesting people. And moving away from poetry as art to poetry as human.