He was the first poet in space. He had to train for the mission as hard as any of the astronauts, and they had told him what kind of thing that they wanted him to write. He wondered if they had noticed that his last book was funded by an Emma Lazarus Literary Award, and he had written about how the Blues and Jazz were the real crowning achievement of America, and how they were doing battle against soulless politicians. Did they read, or did they have readers? Were the doorstop novels they claimed to have read really delivered as Cliff Notes synopses, for people who felt literary merit was about as important as the opinion of fifth graders on the labyrinthine politics of the Middle East Situation? Were the poems boiled down to buzzwords?
They shook his hand a lot, and they tried to avoid talking about books it seemed. It was all about the optics of the thing. The optics were good. He checked all the boxes of what they were looking for — they said — but that wasn’t something they would be crass enough to discuss; it was just understood. He didn’t understand. It was a moot point now he was in space anyway.
He wasn’t asked about his writing once he started writing it. He was asked about his personal life. He told them to read the book, and some of them felt free enough to tell him that they didn’t read poetry, and some of them added that not many other people did either.
Carlin Trute turned out a book of haiku for those who don’t like poetry. He turned out some lyric verse for those who might be described a poetry fence sitters. And he wrote an epic poem called Writing In The Space. He wasn’t really seeing that it did much for poetry or space travel, but it paid well enough he supposed, based off of the curiosity factor.
He wondered if there were going to be poets who came after him who went out into space, and of course there would be. His name would be noted down for being there first though, wouldn’t it?
Part of him had wanted to stay out there, but the accolade only really meant anything back home. He hoped it would launch his career. And it did give him something of one.
He would sit in the bar near Cape Canaveral and wait for people to recognise him. It was a sad way to eke out an existence, but how many other poets even had a hook like that? No one wanted to hear his poetry though, just the story.
The training. What were the astronauts like? What was space like? Was he going back? He told them — I wrote some poems about it — they smiled and said that’s interesting.
He wrote a book called That’s Interesting. He was still having fun with it — if that ever stopped it would all come crashing down. How long could he keep the plates spinning? He didn’t know. Some days he felt like he was in zero g, and other days he felt as heavy as he had when he came back down to Earth. It might be that way forever.
‘Hey Space Poet, how is it going?’
‘Good. You?’
‘Good. Doing any writing?’
‘Yeah, you read any of my stuff?’
‘No, not really. Not really into poetry.’
‘Oh, OK.’
‘So what’s it like in space.’
‘You know …’