Poetry Out Loud

May 12, 2017William Coleman

"I stood upon the edge where the mist ascended" . . . "Light! more light!" . . . "I've lived the parting hour to see / Of one I would have died to save." . . . "I found the arrow, still unbroke." ...

I watched and heard my students say these lines, and so many more, one day in January. They were embodying poems they'd learned by heart, each one saying two: one of 25 lines or fewer, and one composed before the twentieth century was. We were following the rules of Poetry Out Loud, the national poetry recitation contest sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts.