The "Honest-to-Xmos" True Origin of the Poem of the Day

No doubt that by now you know by heart the many tales concerning the history of the legendary Rev. Xmos. Here is yet another tale from the annals of the Poet of the Day. It's about the historic arrival of the Poet at Blair High School. It's not particularly flashy or exciting; I'm afraid there aren't any cows or aliens or West Virginians or thunderbolts of lightning, very, very frightening to signal the Poet's entrance. But for those of you who want to learn about the simple, pristine beginning in the Study Hall behind all the glitter, read on . . .

It was late spring of 1989, about the time of year when it was just warm enough for heat stroke, but not enough for school air- conditioning. Kevin Yeh and Jon DeVilbiss were two freshmen, ready to enjoy another day of their second period study hall. Basking in the afterglow of their chemistry papers, they were considering their options. Perhaps some Fool's Errand, or maybe fiddling around with the game pieces on the Diplomacy map to make it more pleasing to the eye. Ms. Wiz, the study hall teacher, offered another suggestion.

A new program had arrived for the Macintosh that she had not been able to look at yet. It was a copy of Broderbund's The Print Shop, a computerized stationery/sign-making program. Kevin and Jon agreed to try it out.

After loading the program up, they decided to try their hand at making a sign. They were presented with a choice of borders and selected the famous flower one. Next came a choice of font. Finally, they were faced with the critical decision of what to put on the sign. It was here that the manifestation of Xmos' spirit first appeared in the study hall, as Jon typed the words Poem of the Day.

The topic was clearly going to be flowers. After many seconds of deep thought, the spark of inspiration came: "Flowers are nice." Here, the freshmen were struck with a dilemma that plagues all poets: the rhyming scheme - namely, words at the end of lines should rhyme with other words at the end of lines. Sophomore Robert Hershey came over to help and his extra year of world experience was invaluable in composing the second line: "They don't smell like rice."

The final two lines flowed quickly thereafter: "They look very sweet/So don't smoosh them with your feet." After the students looked over their poem, they were in awe that they had been able to compose a work of such beauty and majesty. They agreed that the inspiration and possibly the word choices themselves must have come from some higher spiritual source. They decided to sign it under a pseudonym, as taking personal credit for such a thing would be overly pretentious and possibly blasphemous. The first that came to mind was of religious origin: "Rev. Xmas," Xmas as in Christmas. However, they decided to be much more subtle about it. Thus, Xmas was changed to Xmos.

The poem was printed on the Imagewriter and shown to Ms. Wiz, who grimaced in admiration. The page was taped to the study hall whiteboard for public viewing. The next day, the group was so encouraged by the number of death threats they had received that they decided to compose a second poem, complete with a bow border in Print Shop:

Bows are cool.
You wear them in your hair.
You look like a fool.
But you don't care.

The Poem of the Day soon became a daily tradition. Hundreds of students made daily pilgrimages to study hall and on a few occasions actually noticed the poems posted on the far wall near the ceiling (that is, if the buzzing yellow jacket they were keeping track of flew by that area). Gradually, the Poem of the Day migrated from printer paper to the less costly white-board marker. It was during this unfortunate period, when there was no scribe of the Poems of the Day, several hundred great poems were lost as the poets sat around wistfully proposing to "someday write down all this stuff." It was eventually realized that Rev. Xmos must be a person of much varied expertise to be able to write such profound poetry about so many subjects. Thus, a partial degree listing was added to the name.

Soon, summer arrived, and though the urge to continue writing Poems of the Day was strong, the poets drifted to other activities over the summer. The Poem of the Day lay dormant until early in the next school year, the original Print Shop copies of the Poems of the Day surfaced in Study Hall. This inspired the poets to rejuvenate their efforts in bringing Poems of the Day to the public. Jeff Hostetler became a new active Poet of the Day. The Poem of the Day found its way to the VAXMAIL and soon much of the sophomore class could be found reading their messages with a puzzled look on their faces. Then-sophomores Naoki Hirata and Hormuzd Katki contributed with several epic poems (of an unprecedented 15 lines or more!). Most of these were sadly lost after a VAX disk crash which resulted in the wiping of most of the files of the old accounts.

The third year of the Poem of the Day saw further changes develop in style. A greater insight into poetry was gained in what was the junior year of most of the poets (despite the efforts of Essay/Lyric 1). The poems became more varied in structure, drifting from the traditional four-line poem to poems of varying length that even extended over several days. Several critical essays, such as the Evolution of a Poem of the Day , and Analysis of a Poem of the Day (included in this volume), were also written. Also, near the end of the third year marked the first time the Poem of the Day appeared in the Silver Chips booster section. Finally, the position of the Poet of the Day scribe and treasurer was taken up by Aaron Greenhouse.

Now, the Poem of the Day nears the end of its fourth year of existence and has covered topics ranging from the first flowers and spleens to recently colleges and senioritis. The most recent additions to the select company are Sanjaya Rajapatirana, Mehul Shah, and Philip Moyer. The Poets of the Day are currently looking for underclassmen successors to which they can pass on the torch of Rev. Xmos. They are glad they can leave the Poem of the Day and Rev. Xmos at a state which is a pinnacle reached by all great cultural fixtures of the Western World: selling merchandise (Xmos University T-Shirts and copies of The Poems of the Day).