by Garrison Keillor
(The Atlantic, Feb.96)
BEGINNING:
THERE are four hundred poems," the president of the poetry society said over the phone, "but judging won't take you that long, because most of them are pretty bad." The next day the poems arrived in an apple carton, three bundles bound with rubber bands, and I spread them out in the squares of sunshine on my dining-room table. "O dining-room table, dear old friend, home of my mournful mashed potatoes." Four hundred poems, enough to fill a bread box, by ninety-three poets who hoped to win one of four modest cash prizes-modest to you, but no prize is modest to a poet. Poets are starved for prizes--awards, with cash stipends, named after ladies with three names. And what poet truly feels, deep down in his or her heart, that he or she is unworthy of much, much more recognition, right away? Not me. I won the Anna von Helmholz Phelan Prize for poetry in 1962 and am starved for another, even though I am no longer a poet. When I took the rubber bands off the bundles of poems, I could hear a faint sucking, an inhalation of poem breath, poems whispering, Please, sir. Please.
* * * * * * * * *
END:
Okay, I said to her, that's fine,
As I reached for the pistol you gave me, Daddy.
She thanked me for my work, and I said that it was my
pleasure,
As I put the pistol to the back of her head
And blew her brains out,
Which didn't amount to all that much, frankly,
And ran her through a wood chipper.
She made a little bit less than a full load.
I mixed her with the dirt
At the end of the flower bed,
And this fall I'll plant bulbs in her
And next spring she'll look better than she ever did as a
president,
And men in tuxedos will say how terrific the irises look,
But do you know what I went through
For beauty,
America,
And you on the terrace drinking your gin and tonics,
How can you possibly understand any of this, you
dummies?
Okay, I said to her, that's fine,
As I reached for the pistol you gave me, Daddy.
She thanked me for my work, and I said that it was my
pleasure,
As I put the pistol to the back of her head
And blew her brains out,
Which didn't amount to all that much, frankly,
And ran her through a wood chipper.
She made a little bit less than a full load.
I mixed her with the dirt
At the end of the flower bed,
And this fall I'll plant bulbs in her
And next spring she'll look better than she ever did as a
president,
And men in tuxedos will say how terrific the irises look,
But do you know what I went through
For beauty,
America,
And you on the terrace drinking your gin and tonics,
How can you possibly understand any of this, you
dummies?
ENTIRE STORY:
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