The following is an excerpt from the novel Salvation is to be Found in Her:
On the stage in the great hall stood the poet, his bald head gleaming in the cone of light from above. What hair he had was on his face, his mouth an opening and closing gash in the thick gray beard.
Luther was having trouble following the poet’s words, and not because he was at the fringes of the large gathering. Why was it poetry if the words had no more shape than the poet’s shaggy beard? They were feelings, not poetry. The bard was perpetrating a fraud.
That mouth. Was Luther hearing what he thought he heard? Was the poet smacking his lips into the microphone to signify self-satisfaction? Was he making disgusting sounds over and above the helter-skelter words flying from his face hole? The filthy one continued on with his noise, bent on sucking every last ounce of acclaim from the craven audience.
Poetry frightened him. It would always be a world outside his understanding, one requiring slide rule precision. Meter. Rhyme. Anapest. Dactyl. His high school friend Tom mocking those who couldn’t write a single line of iambic pentameter. That book How Does a Poem Mean? that had been assigned back in his junior year, and which he could remember nothing of but its odd title.
After the reading a sad-faced girl named Elinore approached. Her boyfriend was having a party. She said he could come. While her face was somber, no one would ever hold this against her. Her intelligence made it permissible for her to look that way.
Download the full pdf here: Salvation is to be Found in Her