Poetry Out Loud, 09

School has started again, and so far I haven't had a problem waking up. Classes have been just as exciting as ever, but luckily this semester is ending in two weeks and then I won't have to wake up as early.

Poetry Out Loud is a nation-wide poetry recitation contest my school has participated in for the past three years. I really really enjoy it, it's really gotten me into the craft of reciting poetry. You start off competing in your class, then you go onto a school-wide competition, then a regional one, then state, then nationals. Someone from RHS has made it to states every year we've done it. The first year I didn't do too well, but last year I was second in the school-wide part. Practically ever since, I've been obsessively searching poems from the organization's long list of poems to pick from, trying to find just the right poem to suit me.

The competition is coming up soon, we've started practicing our poems in my English class and everything. I have two poems picked out for sure, Dressing My Daughters by Mark Jarmen and When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats. I'm still a little undecided about my third poem, but it will probably be Why I Am Not a Painter by Frank O'Hara.

The first is my strongest poem.

Dressing My Daughters

By Mark Jarman

One girl a full head taller
Than the other—into their Sunday dresses.
First, the slip, hardly a piece of fabric,
Softly stitched and printed with a bud.
I’m not their mother, and tangle, then untangle
The whole cloth—on backwards, have to grab it
Round their necks. But they know how to pull
Arms in, a reflex of being dressed,
And also, a child’s faith. The mass of stuff
That makes the Sunday frocks collapses
In my hands and finds its shape, only because
They understand the drape of it—
These skinny keys to intricate locks.
The buttons are a problem
For a surgeon. How would she connect
These bony valves and stubborn eyelets?
The filmy dress revolves in my blind fingers.
The slots work one by one.
And when they’re put together,
Not like puppets or those doll-saints
That bring tears to true believers,
But living children, somebody’s real daughters,
They do become more real.
They say, “Stop it!” and “Give it back!”
And “I don’t want to!” They’ll kiss
A doll’s hard features, whispering,
“I’m sorry.” I know just why my mother
Used to worry. Your clothes don’t keep
You close—it’s nakedness.
Clad in my boots and holster,
I would roam with my six-gun buddies.
We dealt fake death to one another,
Fell and rolled in filth and rose,
Grimy with wounds, then headed home.
But Sunday ... what was that tired explanation
Given for wearing clothes that
Scratched and shone and weighed like a slow hour?
That we should shine—in gratitude.
So, I give that explanation, undressing them,
And wait for the result.
After a day like Sunday, such a long one,
When they lie down, half-dead,
To be undone, they won’t help me.
They cry, “It’s not my fault.”




The next is a little more well-known.



When You Are Old

By William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.




The next is funnier.



Why I Am Not a Painter

By Frank O'Hara

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
“Sit down and have a drink” he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. “You have SARDINES in it.”
“Yes, it needed something there.”
“Oh.” I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. “Where’s SARDINES?”
All that’s left is just
letters, “It was too much,” Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.






I have all of these memorized (the third is still a little shaky). So now I'm going to be practicing them obsessively and hoping against hope I make it to regionals (hopefully states), as this is my last year to do it.

That's all that's interesting at the moment. Rachel and I are enjoying this final week before she leaves again for college, and now I have to leave for work.

_Dr. M