So, come November 22, my Latin class will be hosting a “Day of Poetic Enchantment” in the NPAC. Now, this event was piloted by my class last year, lasting for around the first half of school. Each participating student chose one poem (or a few if you’re into that) to read to a sparsely populated audience consisting mostly of other Latin students with a few enthusiastic parents dotted about.
When it was your turn to go, you had to awkwardly climb over and around your neighboring friends to reach the steep, unforgiving metal stairs leading up to the left stage (facing the stage), all the while with the eyes of the audience drilling a hole in the back of your head, with the thought of how embarrassing it would be if you were to fall. As you know, the NPAC stage is quite wide, spanning the entire front of the auditorium, but our performances were confined simply to a podium on the right-hand side of the stage (now facing the audience), with a backdrop slideshow presented behind.
After that brief but taxing transition, you give a short introduction of your poem, including its title and author, and delve straight into its juicy contents.
But yeah, I’d say it was a pretty pleasant experience overall. Last year, I read this poem I’ve pasted here for you below from poetryfoundation.org.
Color
by Christina Rossetti
What is pink? a rose is pink
By a fountain’s brink.
What is red? a poppy’s red
In its barley bed.
What is blue? the sky is blue
Where the clouds float thro’.
What is white? a swan is white
Sailing in the light.
What is yellow? pears are yellow,
Rich and ripe and mellow.
What is green? the grass is green,
With small flowers between.
What is violet? clouds are violet
In the summer twilight.
What is orange? Why, an orange,
Just an orange!
Yeah that poem got a few laughs….
This year, things are a little different. Not only will each of us be reading a poem to entertain the audience, but a piece of prose as well! How absolutely exciting. So of course I chose to prose a throwback to my short story from a couple weeks back, Mark Twain’s “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” Sadly, Magister Joyce capped the word limit on our prose pieces to 250 words each, which most of Twain’s great paragraphs surpass, so after hours of scrutiny on how to cut down on the introduction of Jim Smiley or his lost bet, I decided to instead go with the short but arguably sweet passage I’ve pasted for you below.
Thish-yer Smiley had a mare the boys called her the fifteen- minute nag, but that was only in fun, you know, because, of course, she was faster than that and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards start, and then pass her under way; but always at the fag-end of the race she’d get excited and desperate- like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side amongst the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust, and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near as you could cipher it down.
Quite hilarious.
But of course what you all came here for, in spite of yourselves, unaware, was the namesake of this blog post, the poem I’ll be reading to accompany this prose in my “dramatic” reading. In my arduous quest to find a suitable poem, I scoured through numerous websites. Poems.com, poets.org, even our blue poetry packet and past poems I’ve read in Latin! But in the end, I fell back on the most reliable of them all: poetryfoundation.org, of course, where I found “Color.”
I was originally looking for something seasonal, but after finding an abundance of turkey poems either too lengthy or confusing, I decided to move on to the subject of Christmas—hey, at least it’s past Halloween. It was thus that I stumbled across, and discovered, this:
Help Wanted
by Timothy Tocher
Santa needs new reindeer.
The first bunch has grown old.
Dasher has arthritis;
Comet hates the cold.
Prancer’s sick of staring
at Dancer’s big behind.
Cupid married Blitzen
and Donder lost his mind.
Dancer’s mad at Vixen
for stepping on his toes.
Vixen’s being thrown out—
she laughed at Rudolph’s nose.
If you are a reindeer
we hope you will apply.
There is just one tricky part:
You must know how to fly.
What absolute poetic genius. Feel free to clap at your computer screen as you sit here reading my blog; nobody will judge you. Not only does Tocher perfectly balance a strict rhyme scheme with his sense of humor, but its chant-like read in fact enhances the hilarity of his poem; and, furthermore, he paints an amazingly amusing picture of a harsh alternate reality in which Santa’s reindeer are indeed not immune to the irking ailments of time.
I’m not sure exactly what made me click on a Christmas poem titled “Help Wanted,” but I’m sure glad I did. I guess the moral of the story is if you ever need a poem, pay a visit to poetryfoundation.org, and you’ll be sure to strike gold when you least expect it.
Well, I clearly also have a connection to the Midmorning of Poetic Enchantment just like you, so that’s originally why I clicked on this post. After reading, I’m glad I did. It was very interesting to get an insight into how other students picked their pieces because I definitely struggled with it as well. Finding poetry is difficult enough, but you’re right, at least we have poetryfoundation.org to save us. For prose, it’s way more difficult, especially with that 250-word limit (which I definitely didn’t stick to). With all of that being said, it’s clear to see how we can get so caught up in the logistics of this event rather than it’s supposed purpose: to give us a creative break. That’s what I loved about the Christmas poem you brought up. It’s the perfect example of a fun piece of poetry that still uses great technique, so it can still pass as mature enough for the reading. I really hope that’s the poem you’re going to read on Friday. See you at the NPAC!