Rubric for Poetry Performances

The poem performances will be graded on the following elements:

1. Memorization of lines in script (exact poem or adapted poem)

2. Clear pronunciation of words -- easy to understand

3. Lines delivered without hesitations or "ums"

4. Poem spoken loudly so that all words can be heard

5. Delivered with emotion

6. Added facial expression and body language where appropriate

7. Added movement (did not just stand and read)

8. Added at least one production element (sound, lights, props, costume, or other)

9. Delivered/adapted with creativity

10. Engaging and committed performance

Poetry Performances

Here are our various adaptations of Judith Ortiz Cofer's poem, "Carpe Dien (seize the day)"

https://youtu.be/9FkDNWOYiFI

https://youtu.be/KBN0kcKLNBA

https://youtu.be/whicKONFpQU 

https://youtu.be/0YYtoFLrZQI

https://youtu.be/4wH50j5tKN0

https://youtu.be/C-Pqv3AiutU

Spoken Word Poetry Links and Resources

Here is the one where the guy seemed as if he was talking before the poem but it was actually the poem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=lUBP76q6cVU

Here is the one where she starts neutral, even comic, then transitions to angry (the climax), then pulls back to become sad and introspective:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=191&v=gfexOa8-h44

Here is the ode to New Haven's activist history by Aaron Jafferis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=121&v=PXbjqJfcVWo

Here is the one set to music about using technology:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7dLU6fk9QY

Here is a famous one that we did not watch in class:

https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_kay_if_i_should_have_a_daughter

For more by Aaron Jafferis, here is his website:

http://www.aaronjafferis.com/see-hear/

Here is the website for the Spoken Word Artist Sarah Kay and links to her organization, Project Voice:

http://www.kaysarahsera.com/project-voice

Some other videos of Slam Poetry perfromances:

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/the-best-slam-poems

Some other poems to choose from for Saturday's blog post

The Red Wheelbarrow 

BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

The Bean Eaters

BY GWENDOLYN BROOKS

They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.   

Dinner is a casual affair.

Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,   

Tin flatware.

Two who are Mostly Good.

Two who have lived their day,

But keep on putting on their clothes   

And putting things away.

And remembering ...

Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,

As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

We Real Cool 

BY GWENDOLYN BROOKS

               The Pool Players.
        Seven at the Golden Shovel.

            We real cool. We   

            Left school. We

            Lurk late. We

            Strike straight. We

            Sing sin. We   

            Thin gin. We

            Jazz June. We   

            Die soon.

[in Just-]

BY E. E. CUMMINGS

in Just- 

spring          when the world is mud- 

luscious the little 

lame balloonman 

whistles          far          and wee 

and eddieandbill come 

running from marbles and 

piracies and it's 

spring 

when the world is puddle-wonderful 

the queer 

old balloonman whistles 

far          and             wee 

and bettyandisbel come dancing 

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and 

it's 

spring 

and 

         the 

                  goat-footed 

balloonMan          whistles 

far 

and 

wee

A Dog Has Died

BY PABLO NERUDA

TRANSLATED BY ALFRED YANKAUER

My dog has died.

I buried him in the garden

next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I'll join him right there,

but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,

his bad manners and his cold nose,

and I, the materialist, who never believed

in any promised heaven in the sky

for any human being,

I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.

Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom

where my dog waits for my arrival

waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,

of having lost a companion

who was never servile.

His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine

withholding its authority,

was the friendship of a star, aloof,

with no more intimacy than was called for,

with no exaggerations:

he never climbed all over my clothes

filling me full of his hair or his mange,

he never rubbed up against my knee

like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,

paying me the attention I need,

the attention required

to make a vain person like me understand

that, being a dog, he was wasting time,

but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,

he'd keep on gazing at me

with a look that reserved for me alone

all his sweet and shaggy life,

always near me, never troubling me,

and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail

as we walked together on the shores of the sea

in the lonely winter of Isla Negra

where the wintering birds filled the sky

and my hairy dog was jumping about

full of the voltage of the sea's movement:

my wandering dog, sniffing away

with his golden tail held high,

face to face with the ocean's spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,

as only dogs know how to be happy

with only the autonomy

of their shameless spirit.

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,

and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,

and that's all there is to it.

Cheerios

BY BILLY COLLINS

One bright morning in a restaurant in Chicago

as I waited for my eggs and toast,

I opened the Tribune only to discover

that I was the same age as Cheerios.

Indeed, I was a few months older than Cheerios

for today, the newspaper announced,

was the seventieth birthday of Cheerios

whereas mine had occurred earlier in the year.

Already I could hear them whispering

behind my stooped and threadbare back,

Why that dude’s older than Cheerios

the way they used to say

Why that’s as old as the hills, 

only the hills are much older than Cheerios

or any American breakfast cereal,

and more noble and enduring are the hills,

I surmised as a bar of sunlight illuminated my orange juice.

Billy Collins, "The Movies"

I would like to watch a movie tonight
in which a stranger rides into town
or where someone embarks on a long journey,

a movie with the promise of danger,
danger visited upon the citizens of the town
by the stranger who rides in,

or the danger that will befall the person
on his or her long hazardous journey—
it hardly matters to me

so long as I am not in danger,
and not much danger lies in watching
a movie, you might as well agree.

I would prefer to watch this movie at home
than walk out in the cold to a theater
and stand on line for a ticket.

I want to watch it lying down
with the bed hitched up to the television
the way they'd hitch up a stagecoach

to a team of horses
so the movie could pull me along
the crooked, dusty road of its adventures.

I would stay out of harm's way
by identifying with the characters
like the bartender in the movie about the stranger

who rides into town,
the fellow who knows enough to duck
when a chair shatters the mirror over the bar.

Or the stationmaster
in the movie about the perilous journey,
the fellow who fishes a gold watch from his pocket,

helps a lady onto the train,
and hands up a heavy satchel
to the man with the mustache

and the dangerous eyes,
waving the all-clear to the engineer.
Then the train would pull out of the station

and the movie would continue without me.
And at the end of the day
I would hang up my oval hat on a hook

and take the shortcut home to my two dogs,
my faithful, amorous wife, and my children—
Molly, Lucinda, and Harold, Jr.

In a Station of the Metro

Ezra Pound, 1885 - 1972

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie2Mspukx14

The Road Not Taken 

BY ROBERT FROST

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Stopping by woods on a snowy evening

Welcome to the Poetry Unit

The Three Tongues

Tied to the backs
of some women are
bloody sorrows,
leech-like troubles
that make them weak.

In every strong woman
there are three tongues
all in contradiction,
silenced during the day
by a heavier hand.

At night minutes before bed
the strong woman
must unbraid
the three tongues
and let them speak.
Only then can she sleep.


by Catalina Rios

Poetry

by Nikki Giovanni

poetry is motion graceful
as a fawn
gentle as a teardrop
strong like the eye
finding peace in a crowded room

we poets tend to think
our words are golden
though emotion speaks too
loudly to be defined
by silence

sometimes after midnight or just before
the dawn
we sit typewriter in hand
pulling loneliness around us
forgetting our lovers or children
who are sleeping
ignoring the weary wariness
of our own logic
to compose a poem
no one understands it
it never says "love me" for poets are
beyond love
it never says "accept me" for poems seek not
acceptance but controversy
it only says "i am" and therefore
i concede that you are too

a poem is pure energy
horizontally contained
between the mind
of the poet and the ear of the reader
if it does not sing discard the ear
for poetry is song
if it does not delight discard
the heart for poetry is joy
if it does not inform then close
off the brain for it is dead
if it cannot heed the insistent message
that life is precious

which is all we poets
wrapped in our loneliness
are trying to say

Introduction to Poetry

BY BILLY COLLINS

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.