STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION – TOPIC SUMMARY
Topic: Poetry Out Loud Winner
Date: April 16, 2009
Staff/Office: Patti Togioka, Gayle Robertson, Tiffany Hinano Hill; Oregon School for the Deaf
Action Requested: Information only Policy Adoption Policy Adoption/Consent Calendar
ISSUE BEFORE THE BOARD: Oregon’s Poetry Out Loud winner Tiffany Hinano Hill will present her poems for the board.
BACKGROUND:
Oregon's Poetry Out Loud winner named
by Betsy Hammond, The Oregonian
Saturday March 14, 2009, 4:29 PM
SALEM - Tiffany Hinano Hill, a junior at the Oregon School for the Deaf, will represent Oregon in the national Poetry Out Loud contest next month after winning the state contest Saturday.
She will be the first hearing-impaired student who recites poetry in American Sign Language to compete in the national event. She won for her interpretation of three poems including Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish . Knowing that the Oregon School for the Deaf wished to participate in this year's contest, organizers arranged for two of the six judges to be fluent in sign language.
Hinano Hill will get an expenses-paid trip to the national competition, a $200 cash award and $500 worth of poetry books for her school.
The runner-up was Jackie Lubbers of West Salem High.
Poetry Out Loud (from their web page)
Recitation and performance are major new trends in poetry. There has been a recent resurgence of poetry as an oral art form, as seen in the slam poetry movement and the immense popularity of hip-hop music. Poetry Out Loud builds on that momentum by inviting the dynamic aspects of slam poetry, spoken word, and theater into the English class.
The National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation have partnered with State Arts Agencies of the United States to support the expansion of Poetry Out Loud, which encourages the nation's youth to learn about great poetry through memorization and performance. This exciting program helps students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about their literary heritage.
2
Poems
Ars Poetica
By Archibald MacLeish
A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—
A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.
*
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,
Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,
Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind—
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.
*
A poem should be equal to:
Not true.
For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.
For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—
A poem should not mean
But be.
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
By William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Inside Out
By Diane Wakoski
I walk the purple carpet into your eye
carrying the silver butter server
but a truck rumbles by,
leaving its black tire prints on my foot
and old images the sound of banging screen doors on hot
afternoons and a fly buzzing over the Kool-Aid spilled on
the sink
flicker, as reflections on the metal surface.
Come in, you said,
inside your paintings, inside the blood factory, inside the
old songs that line your hands, inside
eyes that change like a snowflake every second,
inside spinach leaves holding that one piece of gravel,
inside the whiskers of a cat,
inside your old hat, and most of all inside your mouth where you
grind the pigments with your teeth, painting
with a broken bottle on the floor, and painting
with an ostrich feather on the moon that rolls out of my mouth.
You cannot let me walk inside you too long inside
the veins where my small feet touch
bottom.
You must reach inside and pull me
like a silver bullet
from your arm.
2