Transcriber: Luke DiNardo Reviewer: Lucas Kaimaras
“Ah, love, let us be true to one another!
For the world, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various,
so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here, as on a darkling plain,
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
For several years, this short stanza of poetry
has helped me through the most difficult times.
When I hear these lines,
I'm not only reminded to be kind, empathetic, true to others,
but to be kind and true to myself.
When I speak affirmatively to myself,
I sort of cast a spell on the world around me.
I’m able to do things that I know I’m capable of doing,
and I see the world in ways in which I wasn’t able to before.
This became very real for me several years ago.
With all of the change that already comes with entering high school,
my parents surprised me and told me
that they would be sending me to a private school 40 minutes away
from my family, my friends and from the community that I grew up in.
The thought of attending a private school
was so foreign to me that I literally laughed
when they told me I would be attending Battle Ground Academy in the fall.
Once I got there, however, I wasn’t laughing anymore.
I felt so alone and disconnected.
I was thrown into a world of people who did not look like me,
who did not have my same experiences,
and who I felt did not know me for the person that I was.
Thankfully, that same year,
I was given some resources to help me get through that.
My English teacher, Miss Leah Handelsman,
introduced me to Poetry Out Loud,
a National Poetry Recitation Competition.
Poetry Out Loud is a national poetry recitation competition
put together by state art agencies, the Poetry Foundation,
and the National Endowment for the Arts for high school students.
My experience in Poetry Out Loud has taught me
how integral words are in our experiences and commiserating with one another.
I would like to share with you a few things that I’ve learned
from my experience in Poetry Out Loud.
One. Listen for shared experiences.
When I'm picking a poem to compete with,
I look through a database of hundreds of poems
and pick one that ultimately I connect with.
I don’t focus on who the poet is and what their background is,
but I look at their words and how they connect and relate to me.
Through this, I have developed really close relationships with all of the poems
that I’ve competed with throughout the years.
And with this, I have learned how to connect
with people and experiences that I would not have otherwise.
The second thing that I’ve learned is to look for space between words.
A lot of the times when we communicate with each other,
we focus on exactly the words that came out of the other person’s mouth.
A lot of the time this will lead to misunderstanding,
people getting hurt, and misreading intentions.
When we look at the space between the words,
we’re able to add in meanings and interpretations
that may clear and allow for understanding between two people.
When I say,
“Ah, love, let US be true to one another”
that has a very different meaning from saying,
“Ah, love, let us be TRUE to one another”.
With this, we can learn, collect between the lines, between the words
to find ways to connect with one another.
The last thing that I would like to share with you
is to cast a spell with words.
When I interpret a poem, and when I say a poem,
I focus on line breaks, pronunciation,
the length of lines, length of stanza, tone,
and so many other countless variables
that are integral to driving home the meaning of the poem.
Driving home this meaning casts a spell.
It allows others to connect with me when I am performing.
It allows me to connect with you
when I see your face and your reactions to my performance,
and ultimately build the connection between one person and another,
when we focus
on casting a spell of understanding and compassion with our words.
Ultimately, my time in Poetry Out Loud has shown me
how important it is to commiserate with the experiences of others.
In the past two years, we have survived a global pandemic,
the modern civil rights movement,
and countless other major events in our society
that have caused us to grow pretty divided.
With the power of words I think we can bridge a few gaps,
like I do when I was out of home and with my classmates,
and I hope that you are able to do the same thing.
I’m not saying that you have to go and find some random pre-20th century poem
and learn it and recite it for some people.
But the next time you have a conversation with someone
and you're not quite agreeing with what they're saying,
you’re not quite understanding what they’re saying,
try to look between the lines and the space between words,
look for shared experiences,
and cast a spell of understanding
together that experience and one’s going forward.