Poetry Conference

I went to Las Vegas, hoping to win a few bucks in a poetry competition at the annual conference of the International Society of Poets. I drove there on Thursday through the desert, almost overheating my Geo Storm. Something interesting happened at a lecture at the poetry conference. One of the lecturers had us poets do on excercise to help us learn how to write a sestina. He asked seven of us to write one of seven stanzas. I voluteered to write the fourth stanza. Six words are supposed to appear at the ends of the lines in each stanza. Dr. Martin, the lecturer, asked poets in the audience to volunteer the six words. I found the word choices a bit pretentious:

Fortitude
Ambience
Horizon
Faithfulness
Simplicity
Courage

I noticed that a lot of the poets try to hard to be lofty and significant. I felt like those six words were just asking to be shot down, so I wrote my stanza this way:

My microwave helps my cooking achieve simplicity
I don't see complicated recipes on my horizon.
I choose my frozen dinners by their ambience.
Otherwise, I could only approach my cooking with courage.
The garlic salt and ketchup I use have such fortitude
That my digestion must occur with a sense of faithfulness.

I wish someone had been videotaping at that moment. Everyone laughed and Dr. Martin said, "That's not bad!" Later, he told the other poets that they should just write simple sentences "the way Ramon did." That was nice. I'll probably post that poem on poetry.com later.

After going to a couple of days of poetry seminars, I read my poem on Saturday. The next morning, I sat with 2,700 other poets, all of us waiting to hear if we won the $20,0000 prize, or at least sixth place. I won nothing.