Had definitely heard of Oerter. In grade school. I'm old. Have met Beary. He's brilliant.
Insider secret: The S.I. chat group (Losernet) holds an informal mini contest every time somebody "famous" dies. It's called "O Bitter Fate," or "Obitter Fate," or some variation based on the dead person's name in relation to the word "Obit." Not poems, just funny headlines. Since this contest is a tradition, the smarter & more organized Losers probably write their poems right away (one at a time), & then stockpile them for the contest. If nothing else, they've SEEN all those names throughout the year. If all the submissions this week were only about Anna Nicole & the "bigger" deaths, there wouldn't be a helluva lot of variety in the contest, so writing about some of the lesser figures is definitely advantageous to "getting ink." But even so, the Empress won't sacrifice quality for variety. If it's not up to her standards, even if that's the ONLY submission on that dead guy/gal, it won't make her cut. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] <[email protected]> To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Sent: Sat Feb 09 08:01:35 2008 Subject: [wc] Style Invitational 2/9 2 thoughts--Anyone heard of Al Oerter before today? Not me. I think he was less famous than he should have been. 4 gold medals in the same event in 4 Olympics? Pretty impressive. Also I think Brendan Beary has too much time on his hands. I think he looked up the obituaries the most obscure people he could find who died last year and wrote poems about them--I find it hard to believe he was an expert on all those people like the archbishop of New Zealand. But if that's his idea of a good time, more power to him. I certainly became aware of people I never knew existed, if nothing else. Some people are certainly creative.
