Graded High School, English Department 2011-2012 POETRY RECITATION 2012 WHAT: For the fourth year the English Department will hold a Poetry Recitation, involving all students in the high school. Students will each choose a poem to recite (around 14-40 lines; not to exceed 2 minutes when recited) that was originally written in English. Each selection should be written by someone from the Poet List below or from one of the established poetry sites also listed below, in consultation with their teacher. Students are not allowed to repeat a poem that they have done in the past (listed in an archive in the English department). Song lyrics are not allowed as poems for this event. During the month of February, students will recite their poems in their English classes. Each teacher will choose the three best performers (the semifinalists), who will then recite the poem for the English department. Teachers will then decide on the two best performers per grade level and two other outstanding performances from any grade level (the finalists). Finalists will recite their poems in an assembly at the beginning of April, and an outside panel of judges will choose the top performances from the whole high school. HOW TO: The following tips will help you memorize your poem, from a piece by John Hollander, “Committed to Memory.” The complete piece can be found on Poets.org (URL below). Memorizing sonnet of the catalogue of beautiful sights in We speak of memorizing as getting something "by Wordsworth's "Composed upon Westminster Bridge." heart," which really means "by head." But getting a poem On the other hand, memorizing will make clearer than or prose passage truly "by heart" implies getting it by even the most studious written analysis the difference in mind and memory and understanding and delight. There the ways in which the octave-sestet pattern in the "Italian are many ways to memorize texts of any kind, but for form" of the sonnet can be deployed: John Donne's "At verse, reading lines aloud and listening to yourself as you the round earth's imagin'd corners" expands one long recite them is crucial. It is partly like memorizing a song complex imperative in its first eight lines; then, starting whose tune is that of the words themselves. The kind of with a "But. .," qualifies the octave in the final six lines of ordering or sequence or logical progression of parts of the sestet. But Milton's famous sonnet on his blindness the poem—lines, groups of lines, stanzas, sections, verse systematically bridges what we might think of as a logical paragraphs—will figure strongly in the way we hold it space of refraction or qualification usually found between together in memory. octave and sestet. His sentence "But patience, to Different poems get remembered in different prevent/That murmur, soon replies. ." connects the lines ways—a ballad or other narrative poem as opposed to a and even the sections that are almost like two stanzas in lyrical poem that unfolds in its own kind of sequence—a this sort of sonnet, with a strong enjambment. strophic poem or a passage of rhymed or blank verse When memorizing a poem, too, we become aware of that moves on more discursively. In memorizing and the resonances of particular words. For example, a reciting, one becomes even more deeply aware of memorized reading of Shelley's "Ozymandias" might very pattern and structure: stanza forms, repeating patterns of well come up with the two meanings of "mock" in "The anaphora (as in Thomas Carew's lovely "Ask me no hand that mocked them"—imitate (here, in sculpture) more") or refrain. We notice, too, how the argument and ridicule or deride. And note the change of the mood catalogue or narrative unfolds itself through the stanzas, of the single auxiliary verb "do" in the first refrain of sections, or even groups of lines. Dylan Thomas's "Do not go gentle..." from imperative to Certainly a poem's structure—the way in which it's indicative in the central tercets, or the subtle shifts in put together—becomes very important; as you meaning of the second refrain. This poem also memorize a sonnet, you almost get to feel the way in exemplifies the form called "villanelle." With its repeating which it can be argumentative or more expressively double refrains, a poem like this is rather easy to meditative in its structure. Shakespeare's Sonnet #18: memorize; on the other hand, reciting it aloud, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?/Thou art more "performing" it—as will be seen in a moment—presents lovely and more temperate," for example, is arranged in interesting challenges to the intonation and emphasis quatrains and a summary couplet, and yet its pattern is given to repeated elements. that of a catalogue of comparisons followed, in the last six lines, by a set of transcending contrasts. It avoids the Performance logical unfolding of "If And. Then. Yes" so frequent in Having recorded a poem in your memory is one that mode. Compare it with the arrangement in the thing. Playing what's been recorded is another. A perfectly played and recorded tape or CD can sound like a disaster brook"—where you would want to I override the on faulty equipment handled ineptly. So with a line-break almost completely in your reading of it, instead memorized text. Performing a poem can mean any one of of pausing as you might naturally do at the rhyme-word, a number of things. Anyone who has heard a poetry "keep." But many enjambments are gentler and subtler reading cannot fail to observe that some poets read their than these, the line-break cutting into the syntax less work aloud very well indeed. They read the poems for violently, and you eventually learn to deal with these, only their meaning, rather than to express their personal gently acknowledging by your tone and near-pause the presences: the "performance" in this case is more like interplay of line-end and sentence-flow at each point. that of a musician playing—and thereby interpreting—a Tone is particularly important in comical or light solo piano piece, say, than it is like what has gotten to be verse: too much underlining of what the lines themselves called "performance art" (a sword-swallower or are clearly doing is like jabbing a finger in the shoulder of fire-eater or stand-up comic). In reciting a poem aloud, a listener as you tell a joke to make him or her "get the you are not like an actor, coming to understand, and then point." Less obvious but even more important can be the to feel yourself in a dramatic part, a fictional person. It's emotional and rhetorical "tone" of a dramatic lyric, like rather that you come to understand, and then to be, the Blake's "The Tyger," or a monologue, like Browning's "My voice of the poem itself. Last Duchess"—in each case you have to decide who the Several matters are crucial to a good playback of speakers are, what they know or realize about what what your memory has stored. One of the first is that of they're saying, and so forth. The more you understand a voice itself. I've noticed that college and even graduate poem and see its complexities and depths, the more you students today, when asked to read aloud in class, mutter will be able to do when reading it aloud. and mumble rather than speaking out—or speaking up. As you recite a poem, you know how long it is, and Doubtless, some of this can be attributed to a fear of how long each section or part of it is. Your sounding pompous, orotund, empty and phony, qualities listeners—unable as silent readers do to glance down associated with the loud and elaborated speechifying of the page or riffle through successive ones—may not. As dubious politicians and preachers, or of simply shouting in a musical performance, your reading, as well as like the voice-overs on automobile commercials. But acknowledging the section-breaks, will have to build whatever its general or particular personal causes, this toward its conclusion. And while a melodramatic, reticence has to be overcome, and a little practice will grandiose, or corny ending is always unfortunate, it is still allow you to project your voice, finding the right level necessary to indicate with your voice in some way that without seeming over-loud or shrill. Then comes the poem has come to an end. If the poem ends wittily or intonation, the matter of the sound of making sense. It is pointedly, tying up its formal or narrative or conceptual through control of tone of voice—of pitch and loose ends in any way, you need do little to color this stress—that we orally represent the various ways in with your tone. If it fades away, as many lyrics do, you may which short sentences or clauses, and long, periodic ones, have to do a bit more. perhaps stretching across many lines, can be understood. Hearing enough good recitation will enable you not Contrastive stress is very important in English— only to memorize, but also to read other poetry with its consider the difference between "this book, that book" sound in your mental ear. Of later twentieth-century and "this book, that cup," and the way the italicization poets, Richard Wilbur, James Merrill, Anthony Hecht, W. S. indicates which of the two syllables in each pair would be Merwin, and Thom Gunn are known for their abilities as stressed.