October
16, 2002
fell for artifice
Listening to:
Stone Sour - Bother
Reading: The Canterbury Tales by
Chaucer
If you've visited the poetry segment of this site you might have noticed my mention of Reset II being selected for publication by poetry.com. I received a letter and I sent back money for a copy of the anthology with my works. Some time after the winners of the poetry contest were announced and there was still nothing in the mail for me, I submitted Happy.
To be quite honest, I did not consider Reset
II qualified enough to make it to the semis, let alone be considered as publishing
material from the 'thousands of poems' they read every year. Neither did I think Happy was
particularly
spectacular either. I sent it anyway, on a whim.
Guess what. Today I had something in the mail. Not the paid-for anthology, but a familiar envelope. The same blue leaf design, the same Robert Frost quote, and when I opened the envelope, the same letter. They have, once again, 'carefully read and discussed' my poem, once again certified my poem as a semi-finalist, and once again, I have "an excellent chance of winning one of the 104 cash prizes or the $1,000 Grand Prize!"
It's an exact fucking copy of the form letter with my name splattered all over where the computer must have read the input to put in [name] or something. Except this time Happy was chosen. The more I read the letter the more I feel like tearing it up. It's making me paranoid. I actually fell for it the first time and sent 60 US dollars for something ages ago that isn't here. I don't even want to say 'yet'.
Was it a hoax? I'm asking myself this over and
over again, rather disappointed that I might have been tricked, that they tricked me into
thinking that Reset II was great, that I wrote brilliantly, and a fucking 3 minute doodle
made it to the fucking semis before the anthology made it into my mailbox. I know it's not
that great, it's no self-esteem problem or anything, I've read plenty of poetry from
people just like me and if Happy made it to the semis "on the basis of your unique talent and artistic vision" then something is fucking wrong, isn't it? Even now as I'm staring
at the envelope, what kind of address is 1
Poetry Plaza, Owings Mills, MD 21117-6282 anyway? Poetry Plaza? International Library Of Poetry? I don't know all
50 US states but where is MD?
I'm so fucking gullible. Fuck that. And fuck having to read all these sentences with my
name at the beginning and an exclamation mark at the end. It's about as disturbing as
earlier today when a close friend of Mollick's (partial friend of mine) let us read an
astrological psychological personality analysis based on the month you were born. I
actually do believe some of this kind of shite, but the way he does it, he is all out
passionate. I can't comprehend it.
I stared at the 20 page report with all these
sentences starting like "You are" "You tend to" "But your problem is" "You feel" "You are more likely to" "Your emotions are" "You should"
"But you aren't aware of"
He is taking all of it so seriously too. Like reading the report somehow helps him... find
himself. He is everything in the report, simply because they say
so.
What does all that mean? When should you take the assessment, the instruction, the perfectly regal all-knowing dictatorship of someone who's never met you face to face and probably manufactures copies of identical reports to other Geminis for a living, seriously? In my humble opinion, when you're never.