Arlene Corwin writes

The Noble Prize, yes, Noble

This has been Nobel Prize week in Sweden.  I don’t know what to compare it to.  As big as Christmas, Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July…The entire week is taken up on radio and television with Nobel.  One learns about and from the prize winners inside and out.  They’re interviewed constantly.  They have a wonderful television seminar where they’re asked everything and  give their points of view about everything.  These are ordinary, yet great, great men. Men with matchless focus, peerless perseverance. Stick-to-it-ness that out does stick-to-it-ness.  30 years, 40 years  they wait – and work. Bless them.

In December 2001 I wrote the following:

  The Noble Prize

Somewhere exists a noble prize –

An all-eternal prize:

A special type

Without the hype,

Where thought and motive –

Tripped from mind to fingertip,

From pencil scratch and paperclip,

Bind up the un-read whole.

A noble prize

For those who never published.

Those open-pipe, sagacious fools

Who, being tools,

Kept at one thing

By rolling out the scroll

To lengths

Immeasurably long;

Withdrawing ego-hand control,

And finding substance in a song

That never reached a critic’s blows,

But sensing something there that knows

Endeavor’s beauty

And rewards it.

In 20015 I tinkered it to this:

             The Noble Prize #2

Somewhere exists a noble prize.

An all-eternal, special type

Without the hype,

Where thought and motive tripped

From mind and fingertip,

To pencil scratch and paperclip,

Bind the un-read whole.

A noble prize

For those

Who, never published,

Open-piped, sagacious fools

Becoming tools, keep at one thing

By rolling out a scroll

To lengths immeasurably long,

Withdrawing ego-hand control,

Find substance in a song

That never reach a critic’s blows, (or nose or rose)

But sensing something there that knows

The beauty of endeavor

Reimbursing time.