There once was a poet from L.A.

Lightning crackled in the night sky, West Nile virus-infected mosquitoes buzzed in the distance, and a woman with a camel puppet roamed the hotel lobby. It was the eve of the Famous Poets Society convention, and things were just starting to get weird.

I would soon learn that poetry, once the noblest of human endeavors, had become a cutthroat enterprise, replete with poetry spies, IRS investigations and a once-bankrupt Shakespeare scholar.

A few months earlier, I had entered one of those “free poetry contests” advertised in newspapers and on the Internet. I wrote the lamest poem I could think of and sent it in:

“Jumping Through Hula-Hoops for a Rhyme”

Many things rhyme with hula

Including the Greek food tabbouleh

And ex-Miami Dolphin coach Don Shula

Who used to earn plenty of moolah.

There’s also a sheik named Abdullah

Who never sang be-bop-a-lula,

And a brain part known as the medulla

And the Montana town of Missoula.

Could any word be any cooler?

In June, a letter arrived from the Famous Poets Society, inviting me to the group’s eighth annual convention, in Orlando. “You enrich our world with every poem you write,” it cooed. “To honor you for your influence as a poet, our Executive Committee has elected to present you with the Roy Rivenburg 2002 Poet of the Year Medallion. Your medallion -- suspended from a stylized red, white and blue ribbon, like an Olympic medal -- will be exclusively handcrafted for this occasion only.”

I had also been handpicked to receive the Shakespeare Trophy of Excellence, said the letter, and Bay Area poet Mary Rudge had “personally” asked that I walk with her in a Famous Poets Parade led by Grand Marshal Mickey Mouse. “She invites you to bring a poem of peace to release ‘on the wings of Pegasus’ during our Famous Poets for Peace Balloonathon.” Hundreds of balloons -- with poems attached -- would be turned loose simultaneously, creating “a rainbow of poetry in the sky.”

The cost was $495 (not including airfare and hotel), but that would be pocket change compared with the $25,000 I was sure to win in the writing contest. As the letter from Famous Poets executive director Mark Schramm noted: “I also look forward to seeing you win our poetry contest! ... I can already hear the crowd cheering as the laureate crown is placed on your head! How beautiful you look!”

Another letter said my verse would be included in an anthology (“truly a milestone in publishing history”), which I could purchase for a “special pre-publication discount” of $39.95, plus additional fees to add a biography, photo or dedication.

I ordered a copy and booked a flight to Florida.

Hopes, and some sad reality

Stepping out of the airport into Orlando’s suffocating humidity, I boarded a jampacked shuttle to the convention hotel. As we drove off, a blond in the front row piped up: “Are y’all going to the poetry convention?” Nearly every hand in the van shot up.

The girl was Tasha Clark, a cheerful 16-year-old from Tecumseh, Okla. That night, she and her grandmother joined me for dinner, where Tasha asked if she could read my poem.

“Um, it’s not very good,” I protested. “I only entered the contest as a lark.”

Her response was heartbreaking: “Well, it must be good or they wouldn’t have invited you here.”

What Tasha and most of the other poets I met didn’t know is that the Famous Poets Society is a vanity publisher that heaps praise on even the worst poems to sell anthologies and convention tickets. The letter about the coveted Shakespeare trophy and poet-of-the-year medallion went to roughly 20,000 people, 500 of whom made the trek to Florida, according to figures supplied by Schramm.

Some of the poets, thinking this was a once-in-a-lifetime honor, paid for the trip with help from church groups, city councils or Rotary Club chapters. Amy Kelpine, 17, of Georgia, whose mother recently died from a brain tumor, said her dad footed the bill using the last of her mom’s life insurance payout.

Some big guns in poetry circles defend these conventions. Robert Pinsky, a former U.S. poet laureate, said for-profit poetry businesses are just as vital to the evolution of poetry as college English classes, bohemia and literary fellowships. “These different kinds of institutions, all imperfect in their various ways, may correct and counterbalance the defects of the others,” he said. “It would be regrettable if poetry in our country became a guild, based on the credentials of a creative writing program.”

Then again, has Pinsky ever met Famous Poets Society impresario John T. Campbell?

Part Shakespeare scholar, part businessman, Campbell, 61, is the father of amateur poetry contests. The son of a railroad welder, his passion for the written word began as a youth in Ashland, Ore., watching countless rehearsals for the town’s famous Shakespeare festival. By his late teens, he said, he was so familiar with the Bard’s plays that the actors sometimes flubbed their lines on purpose to see if he could fill in the gaps. He even made sure his first wife was named Anne, just like Shakespeare’s spouse.

As an adult, he translated that devotion to the Bard into a series of poetry companies that have recruited customers via ads in publications ranging from the New Yorker to the National Enquirer to teen magazines. (Famous Poets Society also sends contest notices to hundreds of newspapers, often using different names and addresses that feed back to one source.) Although competitors have imitated his formula, Campbell said, their efforts are hollow: “They’re in it just for the money.”

But critics say Campbell’s motives are equally suspect. Since the mid-1960s, when he moved to Sacramento and launched a pay-to-have-your-poem-published newsletter called the Promethean Lamp, he’s been investigated by the IRS, the Justice Department and the Sacramento County district attorney’s office, among others.

The slings and arrows intensified in the early 1990s. At that time he owned a company called World of Poetry, which had started on a $1,000 budget and exploded into a flashy vanity publishing empire that held celebrity-studded conventions attended by thousands. Campbell lived in a turreted estate known as the Castle, complete with secret passageways and a lavish library collection that included rare Shakespeare volumes and a book about the Doors autographed by Jim Morrison.

As he prepared for his 1992 convention in San Francisco, the IRS swooped in, saying he owed nearly $600,000 in back taxes. Campbell declared bankruptcy, and a federal court took control of World of Poetry. In an e-mail, Famous Poets director Schramm blamed an accountant for Campbell’s tax woes and said he was railroaded by overzealous government “thugs” and smeared by “the collusive press,” which included a Sacramento Business Journal article that depicted Campbell driving around in a limo with a gun and 200 hollow-point bullets.

In early 1993, World of Poetry’s assets went on the auction block. The crown jewel was the company’s mailing list, with 1.5 million names. It was sold for $180,000 to the rival International Society of Poets in Owings Mills, Md. The tightly guarded list later mysteriously fell into the hands of two other poetry companies and became the basis for an episode of “L.A. Law.”

Possession of the list catapulted the Maryland company to the top of the amateur poetry heap, a position it has aggressively defended by suing imitators and, by its own account, sending spies to research competitors.

Meanwhile, the Sacramento County district attorney’s consumer fraud unit, responding to complaints from World of Poetry customers, sued Campbell for deceptive advertising. The outcome was an August 1993 court injunction barring him and any business he is associated with from certain unfair business practices within California, including coaxing people to sign up for conventions by implying they are one of the only poets receiving a trophy.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Justin Puerta, who won the injunction, said Famous Poets Society, which is headquartered in Talent, Ore., is probably breaking the court order because of its association with Campbell. But Puerta said it’s unlikely a case will be pursued because both Campbell and Famous Poets are out of state and the D.A.’s funds are limited.

When Famous Poets was set up in 1994, Campbell’s role was obscured to shield him from more run-ins with the government, Campbell said. In Orlando, his name was never publicly uttered, and he isn’t mentioned in any company literature.

When I met him, he initially talked freely about his role as “artistic director” with Famous Poets, but when I later tried to ask about the court injunction, company officials said he was unavailable for comment. And Schramm insisted Campbell didn’t even work for the company.

Goofy goings-on

In Orlando, the poets were blissfully unaware of all this. On Saturday afternoon, the convention kicked off with a champagne reception. The poets were herded into a cramped lobby to graze on pretzels and pose for photos with Goofy, who was on loan from nearby Disney World.

The next stop was a hotel ballroom to watch a one-man play about Ogden Nash, a mass-market humorist whose silly rhymes defied elitist notions of poetic form. When it ended, a flurry of camera flashes and applause filled the hall.

During a break, Marvel Johnson, a friendly 47-year-old artist and actor who traveled from Oklahoma by bus, told me he assumed he was the sole recipient of the Shakespeare trophy and poet-of-the-year medallion. He even hoped to parlay the honors into an appearance on “Oprah” to promote his art. “When I show her these awards, maybe it’ll help inch me closer,” he said.

Up on stage, little-known actor Al D’Andrea grabbed the microphone to explain the judging process for the $25,000 poetry contest. After dinner, everyone would break into groups of about 50 and read their poems aloud. At the end of the night, we would each vote for our three favorites. “That will be the popular vote, which the judges will take into account,” he said.

Well, not quite. Head judge Rudge, a published poet whose work espouses humanitarian ideals, later told me that the popular vote was largely ignored by the judges. The deciding factor is what’s on the page, she said.

Nevertheless, many of the workshops were geared toward prepping us for reading our verse aloud. D’Andrea’s method was to have all 500 poets (plus their several hundred guests) stand up and recite something, anything, simultaneously. When the unintelligible cacophony subsided, he said his ears had detected “a lot of incredible energy and bubbling thought.” He urged us to “live in and through” our poems when we read them aloud. “Be there for the poem.”

Next came the presentation of Shakespeare trophies and medallions. One by one, we trudged up to collect our “no other quite like it” trinkets. The oddest thing about the medallion is that it actually says “medallion” on the medallion, apparently so it won’t be mistaken for a waffle iron or new car.

After that, with the poets divided into 10 “home rooms,” each of us got called up to do our reading. Despite a 21-line maximum, it took hours. But the scariest part was that my poem, bad as it was, seemed better than most of the competition.

Then again, what do I know? In 1962, William Carlos Williams raided the fridge one night and jotted a note to his wife that became the well-regarded poem “This Is Just to Say”:

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the ice box

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

Is it poetry? Not to my tin ears, but college professors vociferously defend it. Was I underestimating the talent of the Orlando poets, including the guy who pronounced his name “Anonymous” but spelled it “Anomines”?

Rudge acknowledged after the convention that some of the Orlando poets were “struggling with the language.” But she added: “I’m not judgmental of anyone who wants to be a poet because I’ve been there. My first poem was very sing-songy and trite. Some poets haven’t found themselves yet, but that doesn’t mean you should tell them their work is bad.”

Some of the verse at the convention did contain flashes of brilliance. Lakeesha Nicole Sheares’ “Ego Tripping” was told through the eyes of a narcissist who thought “lightning [is] God taking pictures of me.”

Rudge compared amateur poetry to folk art. Average people feel an incredible need to express themselves in verse, she said, and companies like Famous Poets Society, despite their shortcomings, offer the only outlet.

Contacted later, Marvin Bell, the poet laureate of Iowa, countered: “The issue isn’t the quality of poetry or the genuineness of the people writing the poems. The issue is the intentions of those who run these businesses.... The problem with these things is it’s not illegal but it’s unconscionable. There’s no defense for taking money from people in this way.” Famous Poets officials insist they’re squeaky-clean. “I have run everything we send by a lawyer, and it is on the up and up,” Schramm said.

Although several of the poets I spoke with used words like “misleading” and “false advertising” to describe the invitation to the convention, they still felt the event was worthwhile. Many enjoyed the camaraderie. Tasha, the Oklahoma teen, commented: “I learned how to be a better public speaker and I also heard other people’s poetry and how writing affected their lives.”

It was a common refrain. Schramm said one of every five poets in Orlando was a repeat customer.

Workshops and a banquet

Sunday was a blur of workshops leading to the much-ballyhooed William Shakespeare Banquet. The invitation had promised an evening “so opulent you’ll want to dress up,” and many of the poets did. They came in tuxedos and sequined gowns, African robes and Elizabethan costumes, cowboy boots and high heels.

Inside the darkened auditorium, a red and gold crown glowed onstage under a beam of light. A royal red robe with leopard-print trim was draped nearby, waiting for the coronation of this year’s contest winner.

At my table, the ages ranged from 16 to 88. “This is the best experience of my life,” said 50-year-old Donna Faye Eager-Stoneking of Colorado. “It was my destiny to come here.”

Another tablemate, Carmen Rivera of Delaware, who was escorting her 17-year-old poet daughter, Meshal, said she was suspicious before coming. Whenever she had called for information, “The person in charge was never there. I didn’t know if it was a scam or if there’d even be anything here when we got to Florida.” But now she was pleased: “I think it’s good for people who write because it gives them a place to come and meet.”

Also on the bill for Sunday evening was “critically acclaimed entertainment ... produced by National Celebrities.” Translation: Campbell appeared onstage in a flowing black robe and puffy hat to recite Shakespeare for 45 minutes while an electronic keyboard purred in the background.

And the winner is ...

On the convention’s final day, Rudge took to the pulpit brandishing newspaper headlines about baseball. “Poetry deserves all the cheers that sports get,” she said. “This convention is, as far as we know, the Olympics of poetry.... Consider yourselves as the bringers of a new poetry to society.”

When she finished, a Dixieland band marched in to lead us outside for the Parade of Peace and Balloonathon. Grand marshal Mickey Mouse was a no-show, so Rudge took us on a loop around the parking lot. We tied our poems of peace to red, white or blue helium-filled balloons and released them into the sky.

After basting in the tropical heat, we shuffled back indoors for the awards ceremony, which started with “20 cash door prizes worth $500 each.” The cash turned out to be a $5 bill; the remaining $495 came in the form of a certificate for admission to next year’s convention.

Finally, it was time to announce the poetry contest winners. The robe and crown were whisked in. Then 17 third-place victors were summoned to read their poems and receive $1,000 checks. The poets at my table liked one about a drunk father beating and killing his daughter. And a British woman’s lighthearted verse (“When entertaining kin, I always need a double gin”) got a standing ovation from many in the hall. Another popular entry was “A Cowboy’s Prayer” (“Lord, thank you for the stars across the sky tonight”), a simple petition to God read by a guy in cowboy hat, boots and T-shirt.

The first Sept. 11-related winner was a 13-year-old boy from Pennsylvania: “My heart is full of hatred and sorrow / I don’t know what will happen tomorrow / I live in a house like most people do / and do my best for the red, white and blue.”

Mickey Mouse finally made his entrance in time for the big prizes. The $3,000 winner was a 9/11 tribute titled “Going Up When Everyone Else Was Coming Down,” about New York firefighters. The $5,000 prize fell to a poem about the joy of feeling alive (“Sweet God can you taste this air? Ambrosia on the tip of a trained soul free at last”).

Drum roll, please.

The $25,000 check went to a college biology instructor from Palatine, Ill., for a poem about drinking coffee. After she was crowned and swathed in the royal robe (both of which were retrieved by Famous Poets employees after the show), she read her poem to enthusiastic applause.

Except at my table, where the troops were incredulous. “That is scandalous,” snorted a 29-year-old Texan. The poem wasn’t my cup of tea either, but now that I know what the judges are looking for, I’ve got an idea for my next entry:

Many things rhyme with coffee

Including a hot dog company called Hoffy....