My Poem

    When I first logged on to the Poetry Out Loud website, I was actually kind of scared. The list of poems was really long, and I learned really quickly that the title of the poem gives away nothing. The weird thing was that I actually found my poem randomly instead of using one of the steps. The poem I chose is called Scary Movies, by Kim Addinozio. I first looked at this poem because of its name but after reading it over a couple of times I knew this was the one that I was going to read.
     Scary Movies was one of the longer poems and memorizing it was a little bit hard at first. Basically, I sat down at the table and told myself I wasn't going to get up until I memorized the entire thing. At first I was planning on singing it (when I was alone, of course) to remember it, but then I had this scary moment where I realized that if I did that I might end up singing it in front of the class. So I just wrote it down, then said it, and just in case, memorized it backwards so that I won't forget one of the stanzas when I read it in front of the class.
     I don't think this poem can really relate to my life, but it can relate to life in general. It relates scary movies to real life. I really like this poem, because it has an edge. Its cynical. It starts out kind of light and talking about things like cyclopes and movies theaters but quickly it changes to talking about her friends death and then the death of her parents. It also bounces back and forth a lot, from reality to her dark imagination. I especially like the ending, it's both dramatic and very straight forward and still kind of sarcastic.
    I haven't ever read a poem in front of people before, and I'm not really sure how I'm going to "portray emotions through my face" but I'll give it my best shot. I think that I can use my voice to try and give the emotion of my poem, but if that doesn't work I think that using as little emotion as possible could work for this poem because of how cynical and depressing it is. I usually don't use gestures when I talk, but now I'm freaked out about what I'm supposed to do with my hands... Do I cross them? Keep them at my sides? I'm going to have to watch some more of those poetry videos.

Poetry Out Loud

Part One: 

How many times these low feet staggered

Revenge

Not Waving but Drowning

Blind Curse

Scary Movies

Part Two: 

    My favorite two poems were "Scary Movies" and "Blind Curse". I liked these poems because they didn't use too many big words or old fashioned language. I didn't really like "Not Waving but Drowning" and "Revenge" because I couldn't relate to them at all. I actually kind of liked reading "How many times have these low feet staggered" because it had repition and it was kind of like a song. If I had to choose one of the poems I would pick "Scary Movies" because it is easy to read but has an edge and is a bit satirical. I personally connected with this poem because I get scared after scary movies and have those same feelings and the author applied those feelings to things that could happen in real life.

Part Three:

 

    The two criteria that will be the easiest for me will be voice and articualtion and accuracy. I chose those two because I'm pretty good at talking (obviously) and most of the words in the poem are easy to pronounce. The two that are going to be the hardest for me are the "Dramatic Appropriates" and Physical Presence. I'm not sure how to convey the meaning of the poem with my voice... but I'm going to work on it. And I'm kind of worried about Physical presence because I slouch a lot and I'm afraid I'll foget to stand up straight. I'll just write it on my hand or something.

Part Four:

    I watched the two videos "I am Waiting" and "The Man-Moth". I think these were both succesful performances because there voices reflected the feeling of the poem. It also helped me with how I need to talk for my poem. The wierd thing was, that one person reading a poem seemed to be standing out of the black background and the other one seemed like they were trying to fade into it. Maybe it was a hair color thing?

Part Five:

  

     To be honest, I'm not sure what the competition is going to be like. The poem I want to do I Scary Movies, but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get it because I haven't asked about it yet. I chose it because I like the way it flows and the message it has. I think the website is okay (if they added some games it would be really cool). I think this project would be a lot more fun (not that it isn't fun) if we could use parts of songs (with the teachers permission) for our poems.