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0 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? subscribe | newsletter | deals Classifieds Jobs Autos Real Estate FEATURED » NEWS NOW Ashland gets prepared for climate challenge ... Reversing opioid overdose ... Ashland chamber recognizes outstanding businesses of Ashland ... Ashland gets prepared for climate challenge ... Reversing opioid overdose ... Ashland chamber recognizes outstanding businesses of Ashland ... Barbara Presnell: Why poetry? And why do it now? Comment By Barbara Presnell More Content Now DailyTidings.com By Barbara Presnell More Content Now Posted Mar. 20, 2015 at 8:42 AM By Barbara Presnell More Content Now Posted Mar. 20, 2015 at 8:42 AM » Social News If the young high school student was nervous when her name was called, she didn’t show it. Every hair was in place. She looked classy in her blue print dress and mid-height heels. She walked to the front of the room with confidence, past the judges’ table and the chairs filled with parents, poets, officials and other students. She positioned herself in front of the microphone, made the requisite eye contact with the audience, took a deep breath and began. “Hope.” She paused. “Is the thing with feathers. That perches. On the soul.” The timing between phrases was perfect. The emphasis on the words clear and confident. Her rendering of this well-known and well-loved poem by Emily Dickinson was solid, and she knew it, you could tell, when she walked back to her chair. I was one of those judges, and this was the North Carolina State Semi-Finals and Finals of the Poetry Out Loud competition. These were students who had won similar competitions at the school level and the county level. The winner today would go on to the final competition in Washington, D.C. Every performance was good. Students rarely forgot lines, and they understood the depth and beauty of the pieces they were reciting. The dramatic interpretations were just enough, not too much. Judging one to be better than the other was not easy at all. The Poetry Out Loud program, now in its 10th year, was new to me. A combined effort of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, the program was designed to help students across the nation learn, explore and appreciate poetry by reciting it. Apparently it has worked, because last year over 365,000 high school students participated, and the number keeps on growing. Our new North Carolina poet laureate Shelby Stephenson opened the competition by reading a few poems of his own and talking to the students about his love of words. In addition, he gave each student a copy of his book, “Fiddledeedee.” Throughout the day, I saw students reading it between events. As I listened to the students reciting poems and watched the delighted faces of parents, poets and others in attendance, I wondered, why poetry? And why now? This growing interest in poetry is not just happening within this one group on this one day. Poetry is becoming cool. Of course, this is a relative thing. There are no shoe endorsements for poetry. No TV networks devoted to it, no March Madness of poetry. But it’s true. Why are more and more students signing up for Poetry Out Loud? Sure, there’s money in it for the winners, but it’s like playing the lottery — your chances of taking home the big prize are pretty slim. And why are our country’s over 400 graduate programs in creative writing so popular they’re turning away students? Obtaining a creative writing degree — I know this because I’ve got one — is like majoring in pipe dreams. Poets don’t make much money, even if they publish a lot. I suspect — sadly, this happened to me — poetry receives a bad reputation in schools. Students read the work of long ago poets like Shakespeare or Yeats or Lawrence. Or they read obscure work that’s difficult to understand by poets like E.E. Cummings or T.S. Eliot. Or they have teachers — this happened to me — who make them analyze it, make them find the metaphors and symbols and hidden meanings. Too often students aren’t asked how a poem makes them feel or how they can relate. Poetry, students often come to learn, is not relatable. This is also beginning to change. Students today might read a poem by, say, Maya Angelou, whose words can’t help but make them feel something, words that are familiar, are inspiring. Then a poet laureate, like Stephenson, will visit their classroom. Joseph Bathanti, our most recent poet laureate, made it his goal to visit veterans’ groups in particular, to get the servicemen and women writing about their experiences both when they were deployed and when they returned home. Today, there are veterans writing groups all over the state. Robert Frost wrote, “A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.” Poems, that is, come from those places in us where something is frightening, confusing or painful, and we are compelled to write about it in order to understand it. That’s exactly why, I think, poetry is becoming cool. These are scary times we live in. Every day we’re threatened by danger right here in our own towns. Right out our front doors. Every day we hear of violence and hatred and misguided thinking. Poetry may not be a cure for it, but poetry is a personal way of staying strong in a world that seems more wobbly all the time. “Hope,” wrote Dickinson, “is the thing with feathers— / That perches on the soul—/ And sings the tune without the words— / And never stops—at all—.” Outside her window, the Civil War was raging. Even today — especially today — those words offer something to hold onto in the middle of it all. So, why poetry? Why now? It seems like the better question is why not poetry, right now? Barbara Presnell is a poet and teacher of writing who lives in Lexington, North Carolina. Contact her at barbarapresnell.com . By Barbara Presnell More Content Now DailyTidings.com By Barbara Presnell More Content Now Posted Mar. 20, 2015 at 8:42 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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