During National Poetry Month, we will be posting poems that originally ran in one of the ten journals published by NCTE. This poem “Poetry Out Loud” by Jonathan S. Loper comes from English Journal:
Poetry Out Loud
(for Nicole Louw, 2015 Poetry Out Loud Alabama Champion)
A skinny Puerto Rican boy,
proud of his country (ashamed of his country),
confidently performs the naked buttocks of William
Carlos Williams’s “Danse Russe,”
looks in his mirror, and finds
a skinny Puerto Rican poet.
An imaginative South African American girl from
Alabama agrees (but disagrees) with a first-generation
American immigrant who remarks—sharing
his corrupted vision of politicians, businessmen,
and lovers—that Alabama is the most racist
place on earth. She voices Tony Hoagland’s
ageless speaker: “This is not a test / and everybody passes.”
The Puerto Rican boy and South African Alabamian girl
redefine American, finding a shared language to teach each other
a new way to speak—to discover on stage the voices
of poems
and Puerto Rico
and Alabama—
and unfurl in the rhythms of
poetry out loud.
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