Poetry Out Loud Anthology
 

Poetry Out Loud is the nationwide recitation contest for high schoolers organized by the NEA and the Poetry Foundation in 2006. This year 400,000 kids participated. Thank you, Dana Gioia. Each must memorize 3 poems selected from an anthology of about 600 poems, a damn good anthology. Does anyone know how the poems are selected? A student recently told me that my Disenchantment Bay (see Deck the Halls archives, http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showth...Disenchantment) is in it. So I went online and was disappointed to see how few of us are in it: Joe Kennedy, Rhina Espaillat, Dave Mason, and Alicia Stallings. We need to get after the editors!

I'm judging the DC finals in May.

Good for you, Mike. I've judged out here in the boondocks.

I have served as a judge, here in the bayou.

I don't know how the poems and poets are chosen. Give me a couple of days. I know someone who does :o

J

And to raise the unspoken question... which of us are "us"? Don't actually answer that, Tim. For your own sake. It's rhetorical.

Tim, he says these are chosen by the Poetry Foundation. The NEA must approve them, but the agency has not much impact on the selection.

If you have to ask, then you're not "us" -
you're one of them: unknown, uncool,
who fill the back of every bus
(if you have to ask.) You're just not us:
you slap no backs, you never fuss
about us, so - although it's cruel -
if you have to ask them, you're not us.
You're one of them: unknown, uncool.

"We have met the enemy, and he is us." - Pogo

And as far as "getting after" the editors, cher -- the Poetry Foundation published me once, about seven years ago. Frankly, since that time, I could wallpaper our small Paris apartment water closet with the rejections they have sent me. I have taken a sacred vow of submissive silence toward Chicago, expecting they will never again listen to me. So, pardonnez-moi, monsieur, if I withdraw into zat French wall, and watch to see how it works out for you ;-)

OK, well Poetry has been good to me. Don't much care for the magazine, but I was pretty impressed by the high school anthology. Michael, I love your triolet, but I assure you, it's very cool to be in there with Roethke, Frost, Bogan, Bishop, etc. Not to mention Shakespeare, Donne and Milton. By "us" I meant we Sphereans, Quincy. And of course, we Whup-assers too!

"Do not exalt yourself in the king’s presence, and do not claim a place among great men; it is better for him to say to you, 'Come up here,' than for him to humiliate you before a nobleman."

- Proverbs 25:6,7

What Ed said. So, if anyone should need me -- I shall be here in the bell tower, with Quasimodo...

Hey, Jenny, I struck out three times with your editor at National Review and gave up. I'm not into wall paper. Good one, Ed. The I Ching says exactly the same thing.

Tim, you are a god. Would that I had stopped at three.

Jenny

I just MC'd the Colorado State championships, and truth to tell "we" don't matter half as much as these beautiful kids who put everything they are on the line to recite poems in front of a large crowd for the first time in their lives. I am continuously moved by what these kids do. For the second year in a row the Colorado State Champion is a fine boy named Samuel Opoku, with quite an immigrant story. I wish him all the luck in the world at nationals.

This program means more to me because performance has always been such an important part of my life and my teaching. I don't think you really understand a text until you can perform it, at least in the theatre of your mind. When I despair of ever being able to teach anything in my day job, at least I know I have made kids memorize and perform poems.

When I taught Beowulf last fall, the teacher picked a boy to read Wiglaf's speech after the death. He was drop dead good looking, had a glorious baritone, and sight read heroic tetrameter perfectly. I asked him to try POL, and he won the state competition. This program is a magnificent legacy from Dana's service to the nation, and it's growing like crazy.

I am amazed that there are 400,000 kids in the United States who memorized 3 poems this year. I wonder what their choices were; which poems were chosen over and over; which seemed harder or easier to read aloud?

Ed

Do you think, Tim, as I do, that the drop-dead gorgeousness had more than a little to do with the winning of the competition?

Certainly didn't hurt, John. The boy could make it in Hollywood. Ed, my limited experience is that the kids are choosing poorly and are poorly coached. They are memorizing short pieces of free verse, though one of the three poems must be 19th century or earlier. That's usually eight lines of Emily Dickenson! I won the Minnesota State Serious Declamation Contest in 1967 by reciting Prufrock, a tall order at age 16, and the kids I beat were generally doing the great romantic odes. I think these POL kids would have fared very poorly against my generation. Still, more power to them. I am delighted the program is growing in popularity, and I'm going to coach some of the coaches next year.

Of course, the National Forensic League (debate and competitive acting) has had a poetry recitation category for ages (which was well-populated in 1990s Oklahoma, at least), far predating Gioia's tenure as NEA director.

What a wonderful contest title! Betcha a barrel of lutefisk it doesn't exist anymore (I googled, and all I found were some mentions in obituaries), except possibly in a Garrison Keilor routine. There's a message there.

No, Michael, Quincy's right, it's the National Forensic League, still very alive and kicking. I debated, recited humorous and serious poetry, and competed in extemporaneous speech, perhaps the most challenging event of all. One thing I love about POL is the poster with all the poets smiling down on me in every English classroom. The center photograph is Rhina's, so I'm never lonely teaching high school kids!

Quincy, I am so glad you mentioned this. My children participated in it, before the Poetry Out Loud thing became popular. I liked it very well -- in that program, the kids could choose their own poems, (as I recall). Until Tim's post, I had not realized they are not free to do this, under the Poetry Foundation "mandate." What a shame.

One review I have found, on a drawback to the Poetry Foundation's selections, in the anthology. Notice the remark about the prejudice against metrical work. Italics mine:

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/h...le.htm?id=6769

A quote:

"A deeper problem is that the Poetry Out Loud anthology, on which participants must draw in choosing the poems they recite, favors modern poets, many of whom lack the rhythmical sophistication of the major poets in the literary canon. Of some 360 poets featured in the online anthology, more than 200 were born after 1910.

With poetry so recent, it is difficult to distinguish poems with a permanent value from those that reflect transient fashions. Much of the poetry chosen for the anthology is, moreover, metrically irregular; whatever the other merits of this verse, it cannot match the intricacy and musical complexity of poetry composed in fidelity to the traditional rubrics of metrical order."

Well, that is a bit unsettling. I keep forgetting about the poetry wars. I don't understand why they didn't choose some well-regarded anthology to use, instead -- but, I guess that's politics for you.

Ed

Actually, looking at the review, its concerns are essentially that the white males are putatively slighted. I rate Bogan much higher than the reviewer, for instance, and I have no patience for this sort of thing: "It is not simply that the program has been avowedly influenced by hip-hop, with its typically monotonous rhythms, and by 'slam poetry,' a form of expression more akin to political propaganda than to art." I don't personally listen to a lot of hip-hop, but this sort of language makes the reviewer sound like one of those old people in a heavy metal video in the early 1980s who'd cover their ears whenever Ratt started playing. My objection is to court poetry full-stop, not that they let some women and racial minorities in. I think Jen's broader point is more apropos--the very notion of a Poetry Foundation-NEA Anthology of officially approved poetry, regardless of specific contents, is invidious.

(And where the hell's the left on this? Jesus, talk about ceding hegemony to the Class Enemy! Pathetic.)

This being a recitation contest...
 

Interesting link, Jennifer. Thanks for posting it.

Personally, I think the only criterion should be how well the poem works on the stage, as opposed to the page, but that's just me.

I wonder how many of the poems selected by the competitors are metrical (if only because many find them easier to memorize) and if future iterations of the contest will reflect whatever preference the entrants demonstrate. FWIW, I was somewhat surprised to learn that the slate for the English Canadian version is very similar.

Best regards,

Colin

So invidious I could cry.

My pleasure, Wintaka.

Jennifer

I think this is a reflection of what's already happened; or -- though on a larger scale -- a further entrenchment. I think of what caused the 'Jorie Graham rule' (which rather than being an isolated thing, was probably de rigueur), as well as how some obviously bad or mediocre poets (fill in your name of choice) become the 'po-biz flavor of the month' as I think Quincy said once. Also, I think it's part of the general assumption that poetry has moved on to free verse; modern exceptions being included, if infrequently, because they are just that outstanding, because the poet knows someone, because an eminent old master has been grandfathered in, or as an interesting relic. This seems to be more of the same thing, writ larger. Perhaps I have that wrong, but so it seems to me.

Ed

Here's the thing about any poetry recitation competition, though--the student hasn't much time and is probably best served by catering to his/her own performance style. Perhaps in a few cases it might spur qualitatively greater literacy in a participant, but I doubt that very many of the debaters at Norman High who cited Kant's categorical imperative in their arguments ever read the guy. That said, a few debate and acting tournaments turned me against Ann Sexton, so that's something.

The broader question is one of sustained exposure, which, with the constant battery of tests in American schools, becomes more difficult, especially as curricula grow more rigid as a result. Poetry needs to be available for those who need it or at least want it, and as something living and evolving, organic to this historical moment as much as any other. I suspect that my own entry points--literate parents, a few good English teachers, intellectual friends, a library card--are fairly typical. Jon Soske went around declaiming "i will not kiss your f*cking flag" from e.e. cummings's "i sing of Olaf, glad and big" around the beginning of the first Gulf War, which made a big impression on me. Needless to say, a poem that declares "there is some shit i will not eat" is not on the curriculum in Oklahoma.

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star"

King George, laughing his royal ass off.

Pardon my Louisiana French.

Forget what I wrote about not getting after these people. I have written the agency, inquiring as to what person or persons exactly are responsible, at the Poetry Foundation.

Hell hath no fury like a mocked, taxpaying mother.

What has 'the left' got to do with poetry, Quincy? In general they don't care for it. Not YOU of course, Quincy, as Sir John Gielgud would have said.

Hmm, I'm pretty much of a southpaw myself, John, so I hope you aren't lumping me in with the them who make up the 'they' who've given you that impression.

My guess is, less than one in ten people care much if at all about poetry, in these parts at least, and lefties of my acquaintance are probably as guilty of that as any other group; but I don't think they stand out in that respect.

Although, come to think of it, lefties here might be righties there, for all I know.

Best,

Ed

John--

I mean that the (mostly liberal) left-leaning chattering classes in this country have increasingly ceded discussion of literature and the arts (which, being public, does fall under the purview of discussion) to the right (or, quite possibly the peer-reviewed academic specialist journals). One finds more in The New Criterion (which sees itself mostly as a cultural journal) or (gulp!) The Weekly Standard than in, say, The Nation or In These Times. (N + 1 is rectifying this to an extent, but it is still relatively recent. The Baffler is also quite good and ran a rather damning critique of the Bush-era NEA and Poetry Foundation a few years ago. But these are, alas, still the exceptions.)

As for "the left" not caring about poetry, I'll resist the urge to utter something unprintable and make the more general point that the arts are the purview of public discussion from any and all political and philosophical perspectives.

The right isn't domimnant in literature. It's just noisier and more arrogant.

Oh come, Michael, nobody is noisier or more arrogant than a leftie intellectual. We have a man called Dawkins over here, never shuts up. I am a weeny bit to the right and not much of an intellectual though I do read the odd book if it's not too long. And as everyone knows I'm an absolute pussy cat.

Oh good, John. I thought - apparently mistakenly - that that sounded a bit arrogant, a tad Blimpish, the kind of thing one hears harrumphed at one's club. Glad you cleared it up. That Dawkins chap definitely must be scolded. Give your photo of Maggie a kiss for me.

(I will admit that my characterization of the right was based on American politics - come listen to Mitt, Rick and Newt for a few months - or sit through the debates with all eight or so original candidates - and you'll understand my reaction.)

Never wanted to be an us -
Still pretty happy being me;
Plumb born inhomogeneous
Never wanted to be an us.
I mean: crowds are anonymous,
So, I guess, is a cemetery.
Never wanted to be an us -
Still pretty happy being me.

I don't see how having a national competition (whether right-inspired or left-inspired) precludes 'the left' (or whoever) organising their own local competitions, jamborees, festivals; should they have the motivation to do so.

A ponderpoint which may be relevant here.

Since 1922 Wales has had the Urdd Gobaith Cymru (League of Welsh Youth). The Urdd organises events, including cultural events, for Welsh-speaking young people with a declared focus on the values of Christianity, Co-operation (the Urdd is historically syndicalist), and preserving the Welsh language. Since the 1930's (at least) Urdd activities have included national events (national to Wales, obviously) for solo and group performance of poetry (always in Welsh).

There is no shortage in Wales of opportunities for young English-speakers (around 85% of the population) to perform poems. Many schools have cultural festivals (eisteddfodau) following the Urdd model (but bilingual, and often dominated by English), and often these lead on to a regional eisteddfod.

But there is nothing in English to match the central organisation, or the prestige, of the Urdd eisteddfod.

There are also sporadic national (national to all of the UK) competitions for younger reciters of poetry, usually put together by the Poetry Society (our last poet laureate - Andrew Motion - was very enthusiastic about these).

But if you turn up at a regional Welsh heat for a UK national poetry reading competition (whether as a judge, or just a kittzer) you will regularly find that around half the performers who have made it this far are first-language Welsh speakers. In most cases around half the shortlist you pass on to the next stage will also be first language Welsh speakers.

The Welsh first-language children are reading poems in a language they don't speak at home and probably poems they don't much like or understand (contemporary Welsh language poetry is closer to The Yellow Book than to Ramazani / Ellmann / O'Clair). But because they have grown up in a tradition where reciting poetry to an audience is normal, and valued, they outperform their English-only peers by a factor of 2 or 3.

I think we need to normalise the notion of reading poetry (aloud, or at all) in any and every way available to us. I noticed that when I lived in Prague, if I carried a volume of a Peterloo Poet into a café, and began to read it - there was a good chance that a total stranger would sit down next to me and strike up a conversation about modern poetry. In London visibly carrying a Peterloo Poet volume has the same effect as clanking a bell and wailing 'Unclean'.

I can't think that anything which raises the profile of poetry is ever a bad thing. If folk don't like poems, they won't take to them. (I don't notice queues outside Early Music recitals, though that has done an excellent job of making itself visible in the UK over the last fifty years).

Who wants less poetry? It's a rare case where more is just inevitably going to mean better.