Jury Duty


Today I find the fat brown envelope in my mailbox.  Filled with mixed 
anticipation and dread, I carry it inside and sort through its 
contents:  A polite cover letter, a stamped return envelope, a stack 
of forms to fill out, and three dozen poems with their writers' names 
censored out with black marker.  

I lay it all aside for a day or two, sort of half hoping it will go 
away.  Am I worthy?  What if I do it all wrong, giving the lowest 
ratings to the best works of the century?  Will I someday find my name 
in the Guinness Book of Records under "Worst Poetry Judge"?  

But the envelope remains, substantial as ever.  It has to be dealt 
with.  I begin reading.  

Several pieces carry me along for a while, but lose me near the end, 
where the meaning I thought I'd found vanishes into a fog of opaque 
words.  Do I suffer from some as-yet unnamed posterio-poetic deficit 
disorder, an inability to understand the endings of poems?  Or am I 
seeing a new type of worldwide energy shortage, poets running out of 
steam in the home stretch?  

If my old college diploma had had "Literature" lettered on it instead 
of "Engineering", would I be better at this task?  Or would I just be 
more capable of hiding my doubts and fears, perhaps even from myself? 

As I start sorting through, putting things into piles of different 
kinds of feelings, Kittycat butts in, as usual.  Thoughts of 
delegating the task cross my mind.  But it wouldn't work.  I could 
hear the editorial staff's howls of derision:  "Everything that 
mentions mice or fish or small birds got a 10.  What did he do, let 
his cat do the judging for him?"  

I don't get this one at all.  Did the author just throw words together 
and hope nobody would question them?  Or is this Emperor really 
wearing fine garments I'm not worthy to see?  Is there such a thing as 
a poem too good for me to understand?  My old Engineering diploma 
tells me "No." 

I can smell the rain another writer was out in.  Put that one in the 
"good" pile.  But would I have judged it differently on a less cloudy 
day?  

As I finish another my hand steers itself to add it to one of the 
growing piles.  Something inside seems to know, even if "I" don't.  

So maybe I'll get through this after all.  


                                   -- Tom Digby
                                   00:03 Feb 12, 1996 
                                   19:45 Feb 14, 1996