Greensboro's
Favorite Poems Contest 2005
Name:
Jaimie Newson
Poem
Title: Counting
the Beats
Written
By: Robert Graves
Reasons: This
poem is amazing not only for its theme, “when then shall we be when
death strikes home?” but for its rhythm and rhyme as well.
I love what the poet says about love and the selfishness of it.
“Death does not matter to you.”
Name:
Terri Fletcher Herring
Poem
Title: Without Any
Assistance
Written
By: Ntozake Shange
Reasons: The
poem is a fun perception of a strong African-American female. The
speaker takes a witty approach to ridding herself of a “good for
nothing man.” She (the speaker) experiences an epiphany when she
realizes that this man will never change.
Name:
Monique Hurdle
Poem
Title: The
Raven
Written
By: Edgar Allen Poe
Reasons: This
poem made me decide to be a poet. In eighth grade, my English teacher
played a recording of The Raven. It
was so lyrical, so dramatic! Unlike anything, I had ever heard before.
I knew then that this was what I wanted to do.
Name:
April Dye
Poem
Title: Monster
Mothers
Written
By:
Florence
Parry Heide
Reasons: This
is one of the first poem I memorized for school.
All mothers brag about their children monster mothers is no
different!
Name:
Thad Eagles
Poem
Title: Somewhere
I Have Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond
Written
By: E. E. Cummings
Reasons: My
god read it aloud and listens to it. I could not write any poetry myself
for the next month after I read this because it said so perfectly, what
I wanted to say. “Nothing which we are to perceive in this world
equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me
with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each
breathing.” As someone once told me, poetry is the most effective way
to woo women, by that definition, this is the best poem ever written.
Name:
Martha Shafer
Poem
Title: Unknown
Written
By: Philip Appleman
Reasons: I
like its irreverence.
Name:
Billye Higdon
Poem
Title: Daniel
Boone
Written
By:
Reasons: “When
Daniel Boone goes by, at night/The phantom deer arise/And all lost, wild
America
/Is burning in their eyes.” In
those 21 words, Stephen Vincent Benet gives us the image of a lost
paradise, the undefiled American frontier, gone from us forever.
When I was a child in
Jefferson County
,
Kentucky
, I used to play in some woods near my home. I played explorer: crossed
streams, swung from long grapevines, caught skinks. Those woods fell to
developers many years ago and like Boone, the frontier, so many places
of natural beauty in this country they are not coming back. Such
unrecoverable loss!
Name:
Kathy Ginsburg
Poem
Title: We
Real Cool
Written
By:
Gwendolyn Brooks
Reasons: I
first heard this poem as an elementary school student. Up until that
point, I did not care much for poetry because it seemed so artificial to
me. Nobody I knew ever
talked like Shakespeare or Wordsworth. However, Gwendolyn Brooks had
such a real, storytelling voice, yet she used rhyme, rhythm, and
alliteration like other poets. To me it was the perfect blend of poetry
and prose. “We Real Cool” made me give poetry another chance.
Name:
Caren Masem
Poem
Title: The
Peace of Wild Things
Written
by: Wendell Berry
Reasons: I
first read this poem in the 60’s when I was in college and the world
was spinning for many others and me.
It helped to calm me and remind me of the quiet times I spent
enjoying nature. I have gone back to that poem throughout my life to
remind me what I have to do when the world is too much with me. In
addition, I met Wendell Berry when he was at the
University
of
Iowa
in the 1980’s. It was a very
hectic time in my life when I was in graduate school and had small
children. Again, the poem centered me.
Name:
Enayat Ibrahim
Poem
Title: Phenomenal
Women
Written
by: Maya Angelou
Reasons: Because
of the powerful words used in this poem that made me love myself for
whom I am. It is a very meaningful poem.
I love it. Every
woman should have a copy of this poem.
Name:
Emily Williams
Poem
Title: Ego
Tripping
Written
by: Nikki Giovanni
Reasons: I
was a senior in high school taking a creative writing class when this
poem was first shared with me. My teacher was Jennifer Wilson, a
wonderful woman who was excited and passionate about life and the things
she taught. We not only read
the poem but also listened to a recording of Nikki Giovanni reading it
herself with powerful drumbeats in the background.
Then we even got see Nikki Giovanni at
Guilford
College
, which was amazing.
After listening to and studying her poetry, we wrote our own
“ego-trippin” poems. This
is definitely an uplifting, empowering poem.
Name:
Amy Torchinsky
Poem
Title: Annabel Lee
Written
By: Edgar Allen Poe
Reaons:
I just love the way it reads aloud.
It does evoke to me the feeling of gentle waves rising and
falling, is very lyrical.
Name:
Analyse Triolo
Poem
Title: Lament
Reasons: There
are two versions of the poem in the book that shows the protagonist’s
views on life. It tells
about how even though life has its hardships, you are blessed.
By persevering, you can determine your future as well as the
future of those you love the most.
Name:
John Liston Cole
Poem
Title: Still
I Rise
Reasons: It
comforts me in hopes and dreams to learn as a man.
Knowing and understand that no matter what I can get up from
what’s not accepted of a human being that want to accomplish something
in life. No matter of the
bad times. It will always
still up hold the good times.
Name:
Shenatta Weathers
Poems
Title: Ain’t that Bad? &
Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress
Reasons: Ain’t
that bad is one of my favorite poem because I enjoy the repetition of
an’ ain’t they bad? An’ ain’t the Black? I also like this line,
“Black as earth which has given birth to nations, and when all else is
gone will abide.”
Name:
Whitney Moore
Poem
Title: Panthea
Reasons: It
captures the feelings of young love as fantasy that I have felt in the
past. It is a remorseful
poem to read by myself. It fills one with all the hope of your life.
Name:
Terry Power
Poem
Title: The
Identification
Reasons: It
is so moving! Told from the point of view of a parent identification the
body of a child, possibly own.
Name:
Kristen Shupe
Poem
Title:
Dover
Beach
Reasons: The
emotion is powerful, climatic, & timeless.
We are here as on darkling plain.