1.18: Winner

     In 2nd grade and 3rd grade, I won a yearly poetry recitation competition at my elementary school. I don't remember which poems I memorized and recited, but I remember standing on the stage at the whole school assembly, speaking my poem. I remember my grandparents helping me memorize my poem, going line by line until I got it down correctly. 

    I don't think I was any good at poem recitation, exactly. I think I just liked poetry and so it wasn't a big deal to stand up and recite something. 

    I don't read books of poems or anything, but I can't deny that certain poems just speak to me. Weird ones, too. Mostly American poets. I'll throw out a line from William Cullen Bryant's Thanatopsis randomly, along with some facts about the poem. I have the majority of Langston Hughes' poems memorized. I remember walking the streets of Harlem, New York, mesmerized that Langston Hughes had walked exactly where my feet were right now. I love the weird imagists and the structured early 1800's poetry where they were still trying to Be Like The British. I once was asked to pick a poem and read it at a Christmas party at a professor's house, and I chose Sylvia Plath's Daddy and I read that damn poem like I hated my dad, too. I did not even come close to hating my dad, but anything for poetry, right?

    So many people profess that they dislike poetry, but that's not really true. They just haven't found the right poem. I'm not really sure how to end this post, so I'll end it with a poem: "Summer Rain", by Amy Lowell.

All night our room was outer-walled with rain.

Drops fell and flattened on the tin roof,

And rang like little disks of metal.

Ping!—Ping!—and there was not a pin-point of silence between
    them.

The rain rattled and clashed,

And the slats of the shutters danced and glittered.

But to me the darkness was red-gold and crocus-colored

With your brightness,

And the words you whispered to me

Sprang up and flamed—orange torches against the rain.

Torches against the wall of cool, silver rain!