A good, good day

Poetry Outloud is a national poetry recitation contest. Our school had its own contest today to choose our winner who will be sent on to Regionals, and then perhaps States and Nationals.

Today, I had 200 teenagers in the auditorium all day listening to each other recite poems (that the performers chose from the Poetry Outloud database and memorized). The poets ranged from Maya Angelou to Robert Frost, Lord Byron, Wilfred Owen, Billy Collins. I was a proud mama of these kids today, who were so genuinely enthusiastic about poetry that you might have thought, as my Mom noted (she came to watch), that they were at a football pep rally. They cheered and hooted and hollered for each other!

the 56 performers

the top 10 (they performed again in the finals to determine the winner)

the winner!

and here I will include the poem she won with, because it is so damn good and I've fallen in love with it over the past few weeks. If only I could post the video of her reading it? I'll work on that.

So This Is Nebraska

By Ted Kooser

The gravel road rides with a slow gallop

over the fields, the telephone lines

streaming behind, its billow of dust

full of the sparks of redwing blackbirds.

On either side, those dear old ladies,

the loosening barns, their little windows

dulled by cataracts of hay and cobwebs

hide broken tractors under their skirts.

So this is Nebraska. A Sunday

afternoon; July. Driving along

with your hand out squeezing the air,

a meadowlark waiting on every post.

Behind a shelterbelt of cedars,

top-deep in hollyhocks, pollen and bees,

a pickup kicks its fenders off

and settles back to read the clouds.

You feel like that; you feel like letting

your tires go flat, like letting the mice

build a nest in your muffler, like being

no more than a truck in the weeds,

clucking with chickens or sticky with honey

or holding a skinny old man in your lap

while he watches the road, waiting

for someone to wave to. You feel like

waving. You feel like stopping the car

and dancing around on the road. You wave

instead and leave your hand out gliding

larklike over the wheat, over the houses.




Hey Adrienne, does this not remind you of our California to Michigan road trip, when we left the west behind us and entered Iowa? Remember how we felt that day?

The first time we heard this girl read this poem to us, my creative writing class all closed their eyes, sighed collectively and said.... let's go to Nebraska. Now, nothing against Nebraska, but that is the power of a good poem.

Happy February Vacation, also known as, "the most stressful week of the Manharts' lives"