Capers With Carroll

As an adolescent, I wrote quite a bit of poetry that, even now, I look back upon as being several cuts above the, well . . . adolescent. I stopped writing poetry when I married. Subsequent soul-searching led me to the conclusion that my verse had been tied up in my loneliness. No longer lonely, my muse fell out of use. In my recently-completed program for a masters degree in creative writing, I produced nary a poem.

However, what my MFA professors could not draw out of me, a blog competition has. Literary agent Chip MacGregor runs an annual Bad Poetry Contest. I took a class from Chip at Mount Hermon, in 2003, and read his blog regularly. I’m still a little miffed at him for not recognizing the brilliance of my entry last year. The poem has been up since last May for the thousands who read his blog, but I figure it’s time to share it with the tens (sometimes twelves) who read mine. Chip threw down the gauntlet with the assertion that

There are only four words in the English language that rhyme with love: "Dove" and "Above" are the popular choices. "Shove" and "glove" don't really count. Use of the baby word "Wuv" can get you shot. (British citizens who enter are allowed to use the word "guv," as in "guv'nor," but don't push it. We Scots have been pushed around by you people long enough.)

I thought I deserved at least an honorable mention for expanding his list 0.4-fold with this entry:

Love

Love
is
like a lot
of
p’lov
in a pot—
rice and mutton
(nice for gluttons).
It warms your innards,
even for beginners.

Love
yells
“Mazel Tov!”
A reset button
When I’ve hit bottom.
It turns plain sinners
into winners.

This year, I’ve decided I won’t wait twelve months to share my poem here. I won’t even wait to hear if I won the Grand Prize lava lamp. So here is my 2009 (untitled) Bad Poem:

this post-modern poem is self-referential
bad as i hope it will be

it won’t rhyme
any time
except by accident

forward or
drawkcab
d
o
w
n

or

p
u

it phlaunts its phreedom to dephy conventions
boldly going where no poem has ever gone

read it and weep

And if this one doesn’t win, I’ll cultivate a new bad poem for next year.

Well, we powered it up this morning to find that while we slept, five visitors stopped by to put Capers over the one thousand mark, but none of them left the required comment to make them eligible for the big prize. Fortunately, all those who entered our contest are closely enough related to the author that they are already on the short list for autographed copies of Friday 10:03 when it is finally published.

However, if this may seem a disappointing conclusion to our big contest, our disappointment probably pales compared to that of googlers who come to Capers hoping to find the music video Itsy Bitsy Spider and instead found this. We have managed to frustrate 14 such searchers in the last three weeks alone. So, our next contest: an autographed copy of my novel (when it finally gets into print) to the one thousandth person who visits The Ittsy Bittsy Spider, thinking they'll see EliZe (with thanks to arachnomusicologist Mataikhan for identifying this artist) singing Itsy Bitsy Spider (and leaves a comment).

Currently, if one queries "ceanosis" from Google Images, one receives four pages of images, fifty of which come from this blog. However, the one ceanosis image I've actually posted is not among them.

I discovered this after observing that several viewers came to my blog as a result of a "ceanosis" search, but they ended up landing at truly random locations on the blog. This is the kind of marvelous trivia that comes my way courtesy of BlogPatrol, which I added to this site December 5, 2007, about the time I started to get serious about this blogging thing.

During that time, I have had 993 visitors, which means that someone in the next day or two will become my One Thousandth Visitor. I suppose I could have one of those flashing pop-ups, congratulating that visitor and promising a prize, except I can't think of any prize that I'm ready to offer. Oh, and I don't know how to create one of those flashing pop-ups.

Someday I hope to have an autographed copy of my novel to give away. So here's what we'll do: to be in the running for a someday-autographed-copy of my novel, leave a comment below this post. Then check back in a day or two to discover who landed as The Capers One Thousandth Visitor!