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Minot resident Stephen Gasser was the winner of
the 2012 North Dakota Poetry Out Loud event.
Stephen tells us about the event
and recites a poem from his winning performance.
[piano plays softly]
The Poetry Out Loud Contest is
a nationally syndicated contest
that happens all across the country.
It's broken down into various levels from classroom level
through the school, state, and then national.
The Poetry Out Loud Contest is sponsored by
the Poetry Foundation, the North Dakota Council of the Arts,
and the National Endowment for the Arts.
I became involved in Poetry Out Loud
through an assignment in my English class.
As most other assignments, it wasn't the most popular thing,
but after picking my poem, "Alone" and reciting it to the class,
I found that I had won at the classroom level,
so I moved on to the school level and went to state.
And surprisingly, with some pretty tough competition,
I was lucky enough to win at the state level as well
and went to Washington, DC in May.
"From childhood's hour I have not been as others were.
"I have not seen as others saw.
"I could not bring my passions from a common spring.
"From the same source, I have not taken my sorrow.
"I could not awaken my heart to joy at the same tone
and all I loved, I loved alone."
The school finals actually were the most nerve-wracking
of all of the competitions, just because it was all of my peers
from all the English classes, so about like 250 to 300 people.
At the state level, however, there were only 13 competitors,
and nationals, I felt prepared enough
that I needed to be confident, so it wasn't as nerve-wracking
as I thought it was going to be.
You choose from a selected anthology of works
that the Poetry Foundation has selected for a particular year.
They have to be X amount of lines
from a certain time period,
so you don't write the poems, but you would recite them
in a way that demonstrates that you understand what they mean
and that you can convey that message fluently to the listeners.
You have to recite three at the national and state level,
but just one to get started.
"There are no stars tonight, but those of memory,
"yet how much room for memory there is
In the loose girdle of soft rain."
Poetry is nothing to be sneered at or scoffed at.
Many people think it's a pretty woolly discipline or subject,
but poetry is much like music, or much like anything
that makes somebody feel a certain way.
At any particular time, there's a poem out there
that will suit your mood, and knowing them just means
that you can draw from that at moment of need
and seek solace or comfort in it.
The second poem that I had chose
is "The Bloody Sire," by Robinson Jeffers.
That I chose because it's just kind of another weightier topic
and much like "Alone," I felt that it would go well,
and it kind of parodies the violence in the world
and how silly it is that
humankind is as confrontational as we are.
"The Bloody Sire," by Robinson Jeffers.
"It is not bad. Let them play!
"Let the guns bark and the bombing plane
"speak his prodigious blasphemies.
"It is not bad, it is high time.
"Stark violence is still the sire of all the world's values.
"What but the wolf's tooth whittled so fine
"the fleet limbs of the antelope?
"What but fear winged the birds, and hunger
"jeweled with such eyes the great goshawk's head?
"Violence has been the sire of all the world's values.
"Who would remember Helen's face
"lacking the terrible halo of spears?
"Who formed Christ but Herod and Caesar,
"The cruel and bloody victories of Caesar?
"Violence, the bloody sire of all the world's values.
"Never weep... let them play!
Old violence is not too old to beget new values."