I have transported the following from my erstwhile Angelfire homepage.
Back in 1997, I was a senior at South Aiken High School. Through the whole year, I was deliriously unaware of the fact that I, along with my good friend Paul, was an editor for Calliope, South Aiken's literary magazine. Two weeks before the magazine was due to the publisher, we were informed. Thus commenced the hastiest work I had ever done for a project so large.
We were mortified when we perused the submissions that were to go in the magazine. We hated what we were asked to publish. Yet, when we took out everything that we hated, we were left with enough poems and stories and photographs to fill (perhaps) a matchbox.
We could only publish what had been made available to us. We developed an attitude of reverie and irreverence out of sleep deprivation, long hours of work, and the constant presence of writing that had been submitted for extra credit.
So this is what we made.
This is the hub around which the entire magazine revolves.
Looking back, it's clear what this student poem is about. It's about cats, which I love. However, we did not know who Bast was. (For those of you who are interested and too lazy to research, Bast was the Egyptian cat-goddess.)
"Could she possible have meant 'beast'?" we asked ourselves. "No, there's no 'e'! What is this mysterious Bast!?"
So we went with the cat motif. The experience of the individual encountering Bast, played by Paul's cat, Casper, was analyzed in four distinct psychological cycles. The occasion was so earth-shaking, we decided to put a picture of Capser (Bast) on every single page in the magazine! Note the adorable kitty beside the page number on the lower right of the page.
This is an example of what we made up in the small morning hours at the southside Waffle House to fill white space.
Again, what we did to come up with filler. The above-displayed joke was a note that I had written to a friend during Pre-Calculus. It was never intended for publication. Were we wrong? Did we sin through attempting glory?
More poignantly, did we care?
. . . .
No. Not on any terms at all.
We relegated the poems that we despised above all others to the "Prose for Foes" page. We gave them their own page, along with a centered epitaph by yours truly, to settle the score more clearly.
As a poet, I naturally hold reservations against a policy that singles out specific poems for ridicule, except in the instances of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and Beat Poetries. However, I was sixteen. That should explain enough.
Another masterpiece for filler. As my friend Chris has commented: "What's really amusing about this is that it took three of you to produce that."
Credit where credit is due. Mreowr.
And, of course, the irreproachable monkey page. This, dear reader, is the border of madness.
Web design for Adilegian copyrighted 2006 James Clinton Howell.
