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(lighthearted music)
Voiceover: Minot resident Stephen Gasser
was the winner of the 2012
North Dakota Poetry Out Loud event.
Stephen recites a poem
from his winning performance.
(calm music)
Stephen: The first poem that I was
lucky enough to recite is Alone by Edgar Allan Poe.
I chose it because I'm not really a big poetry guy.
I just kinda thought well what is a
little bit more down to earth,
a little bit heavier?
Edgar Allan Poe definitely comes to mind
as one of the more crazy poets.
And it is kinda so unorthodox.
Nobody really thinks that poetry can be so serious,
but it can be and that's what I like about that poem.
Alone by Edgar Allan Poe.
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.
Then, in my childhood,
in the dawn of a most stormy life,
was drawn from every depth of good and ill,
the mystery which binds me still.
From the torrent, or the fountain,
from the red cliff of the mountain,
from the sun that round me rolled
in its autumn tint of gold,
from the lightning in the sky
as it passed me flying by,
from the thunder and the storm,
and the cloud that took the form
when the rest of Heaven was blue
of a demon in my view.
(calm music)
Voiceover: Funded by the North Dakota
Council on the Arts
and by the members of Prairie Public.