I would shake this page until you walked from it, I would
pry the sides of knives to meet your face. Otherwise
the damage circles. Otherwise the devastations triumph.
With this pen I proclaim them dead.
—Excerpt from "An Inventor's Finest Plan" by Madeleine Barnes
Near the end of Madeleine Barnes' senior year of high school, her English teacher charges her to write a poem to her husband on their wedding day. Like most of her classmates, Barnes doesn't have a future husband in mind, let alone the words she'll say to him. Using her imagination, she writes "An Inventor's Finest Plan," a poem about how she can't possibly pen words that might capture her husband's essence, regardless of who "him" turns out to be.
Later, when Barnes is encouraged by her teacher to submit some of her poems to the Teen Division of the Borders Open-Door Poetry Contest, the student picks her ode to her future husband. Borders receives more than 5,000 submissions.
By the time Barnes is halfway through her freshman year at Carnegie Mellon, she has forgotten about the contest. Still passionate about poetry though, the creative writing and art double-major attends a reading near campus by two-time Poet Laureate Billy Collins. Enraptured audience members mouth Collins' verse as he reads his work. During the question-and-answer session that follows, Collins encourages aspiring writers to be jealous, because jealousy is the propeller of creativity. "That's good," Barnes thinks, "because I'm really jealous of you."
At the end of her freshman year, the Open-Door Poetry Contest and Collins come back into her life. "An Inventor's Finest Plan" was selected by none other than Collins, the contest's judge, as the winning poem. Her prize? A video of Collins reciting her poem, which can be viewed on the contest's Web site. At the conclusion of the recital, he cites "Madeleine B's ... authority and lively use of metaphoric play" among other reasons why the poem had "obvious appeal."
—Nick Ducassi (A'10)
