Trophies

It was with a small twinge of shame that I realized I've never won a trophy in my entire life. Nada, zero, zip. You know how some people have display cabinets for all their trophies? I don't. I've never won a medal either. I did win a couple ribbons in my sophomore year of high school when I was a springboard diver. One was for winning the sophomore conference championship. Could they not have given me a trophy for that? I mean, come on! I did treasure that blue ribbon though. There was not a shred of cynicism in me about such things. I was even proud of getting good grades. Though, naturally they were never good enough to merit some kind of award. It can be argued that one is not a true poet until one has won a boatload of awards. Have you ever looked at the bios at poetry websites? No poet worth his or her or non-binary salt has won fewer than two or three of those. The official poetry community is pretty small so I guess it amounts to friends giving honors to one another. Sort of like the Oscars. Is there a group that enjoys showering one another with awards more than actors? It appeals to the narcissism implicit in the trade. On one level giving awards and prizes in the arts is preposterous. The sheer subjectivity of art renders the category irrelevant. One the other hand, such recognition of "the best" or whatever is not fully useless. I find that music polls can be pretty good. I can't get enough of these sorts of lists, especially when they take the long view. When the dust settles it's hard to argue that A Love Supreme or London Calling aren't a cut above. I guess we're talking about a canon. However, with the proliferation of music these days I have noticed it has become harder and harder to arrive at consensus. I read a number of music sites of the current variety and there often are lists across sites that have virtually no overlap. Back in the day, there was the Village Voice "Pazz and Jop" poll that was fairly definitive since hundreds of critics would vote on a weighted scale. But thems was the good old days. Even though I read these contemporary polls I find that, having clicked on the video, I rarely like the music. Or I should say, I never like the music well enough to give myself fully to it. I just read out of curiosity, in the interest of cultural literacy. You now how Obama always releases his playlist for the year and it includes all new stuff like Phoebe Bridgers? I read the story and I think to myself, what are you, a 19 year old girl? I've got my hands full investigating the catalog of Coleman Hawkins, thank you. The thing about the greatest, about canons, is that while they present a standard of excellence that is reasonably firm, they also impart a sense of obligation that annoys. Yes, A Love Supreme is one of the greatest achievements of 20th century music, but that doesn't mean I want to listen to it all the time. It is unquestionably greater than a recording like Flamingo by Stephane Grappelli and Michel Petrucciani, but it is actually Flamingo that I will listen to on a more regular basis. It's just more fun and songful. Truth be told, so much of the high quality stuff that gets produced in the arts will never rise to the level of national consciousness. Ask any jazz great and they will tell you that there was someone back there in St. Louis or Indianapolis or Fort Worth, someone completely unknown to the world, who was the most brilliant player they ever heard. And it may not even be a matter of injustice causing this situation, but rather that said player simply had no taste for travel and hardship and fame and liked living where they lived. Fame, shmame. It certainly is possible that the greatest novel ever written went unpublished. Some guy wrote it, hated it, and threw it away. All that said, I surely do enjoy declaring something to be the best. For example, the best Woody Guthrie song is "Hard Travelin'. And if you think otherwise, well, you are wrong.