[Tim Murphy]

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!

[Michael Juster]

I'm judging the DC finals in May.

[Tim Murphy]

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

[Jennifer Reeser]

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

J

[Quincy Lehr]

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

[Jennifer Reeser]

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.

[Michael Cantor]

Originally Posted by Quincy Lehr

And to raise the unspoken question... which of us are "us"?

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.

[Ed Shacklee]

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

[Jennifer Reeser]

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 ;-)

[Tim Murphy]

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!