July 13: Writing Contests, Possibility, "Ives" Dip, Poet of the Week, Adrienne Su, "The Word Was My First Companion"

My mind is a blank page at the moment.  I'm still very tired from the events of the weekend.  After I'm done typing this post, I have to go through my binder of poems and put together a packet to submit to a contest.  After that, I am going to try to catch up on some sleep.

Sometimes, I wonder why I enter writing contests.  The last time I won a big prize was when I was a freshman in high school.  I wrote an essay for a contest sponsored by the VFW.  I went to the local radio station, recorded the essay, and didn't think about it again until I won first place on the local level.  Then I won first place on the district level.  Then, at a huge banquet in Lansing, I won first place in the state.  For the next year, I read that essay across the Upper Peninsula, appeared on TV, and got used to being a local celebrity.

That's it.  My fifteen minutes of fame.  Since that time, I have placed second or third in every contest I've entered.  This weekend, I placed fourth in my age group for the race I ran.  That's about the best I can do.  Yet, I'm still going to enter that poetry contest tonight.  Not because I think I'm going to win.  I'm entering because I choose to live in hope instead of defeat.  By entering the contest, I am saying that I believe in myself.  I believe in possibility.

I believe I might win the poetry contest.  I believe I might get a full-time teaching job at the university.  I believe my sister might get better at the University of Michigan hospital.  I believe in mights.

My question for Ives dip Monday is this:

Might I win the poetry contest I'm going to enter tonight?

And the answer from Edward Ives is:

In one slip of a second, anything seemed possible--had the moon risen and started to sing, had pyramids appeared over the Chrysler building weeping, Ives would have been no more surprised.

There you have it.  Anything is possible.  Singing moons.  Weeping pyramids.  Me winning first place in a prestigious poetry contest.

Adrienne Su is the featured Poet of the Week on Saint Marty.  Her collection, Middle Kingdom, has been on my shelf for quite a few years.  Every once in a while, I take it down, open it up, and find myself in its pages.  No, I'm not a young, talented Asian American woman poet.  I'm saying that I live in the possibility I could be a young, talented Asian American woman poet.

Hey, Saint Marty can dream, right?

The Word Was My First Companion

by:  Adrienne Su

In the flickering suburban night,
Not yet acquainted with the name of the feeling,
I did not dream, but commonly imagined

My future as a teacher or journalist
Not thinking to address
Whether there would be a man.

My family would always speak the same language,
In no way turn alien to one another,
And there would never be a poisonous city

Where people demanded psychic space.
There would be no violations,
Only the rules.  There would be no urge

To walk into an unknown cathedral & disappear.
We'd stick tight as a cocoon,
And there being more books in the world

Than I could read in a lifetime
(And no such thing as the slow
Silent robbery of that lifetime),

It would always be like this moment,
Me and the blank page, hugged by night,
Planning the grammatical future.

My famous cousin, Grant.  His picture pops up when I Google my name.  I'm almost famous.