One Word; Two Poems
Yesterday, at a music festival I encountered something that stuck out like a sore thumb, a booth that looked like it was lost in the sands of time. At this small booth sat two women, typing furiously on two respective typewriters, and infront of them stood a sign, “Give Us One Word and We’ll Give You Two Poems”. This immediatly reminded me of a story by Isabel Allende entitled “Two Words” about a woman who travels around and makes a living off of words, writing poems, telling stories, and spreading news. The story goes on to this woman being called by the Colonel to help him write a speech for his presidential candidcay. The woman helps him with this speech, but also goes on to give him two secret words that only he knows. Later on, the Colonel keeps thinking and wondering about these two words and it eventually drives him towards madness. The Colonel’s men soon realize that the he is going to go crazy before he even becomes president, so they go and fetch the woman to figure out what she said. However, when the woman arrives, she simply looks at the Colonel lovingly, and holds his hands in hers, and that is where it ends. What these two women do, writing poems and only taking donations seems like such a beautiful thing. It is so simple, yet it has such a grand impact on the people as they read the poems that were written for them. I racked my brain for a word to give them. I wanted to choose something grand in its meaning, and also worthy of their time and talent. The women ahead me gave them the word “Bat”. My first instinct was to write that woman off, giving these two woman who write poems for a living such a meager word, and they would obvioulsy have to lower themselves down to write something so simple. But to my amazement, as they read their respective poems to this woman, I was shocked at the elegance that came out of such a short, monosyllabic word. The word I ended up choosing was “Ethereal”. Their poems outdid the beauty of this word tenfold. Their poems were ethereal in themselves. I am not going to tell what these women wrote, because like the woman in the Allende story, these two poems are special to me, and is only going to be known between these poets and myself. What these women do is incredible, and it appears to be timeless. An English major struggling to find a job has become such a cliche in our society, and following your passion for simply tips is so rare and worthy of awe and envy. These women do what every person has dreamed of doing: dropping everything and following their dreams. If you ever have the opportunity to experience this creativity a la carte, take advantage of it, we really need more in this world.
