Competitors may choose from a list of poems chosen by the National committee. They must learn about the poet and the poem before using their work.

Champion Arwa Awan chose two poems by living, American poets for her recitation, as did runner-up Malia Graciani.

Arwa says, “I take pleasure in exploring different perspectives, particularly in regard to history and politics. I greatly enjoy reading — especially non-fiction literature; my favorite books include The Things They Carried and Night. Moreover, I am fascinated by the art of bringing life to a poem through one’s own passion, interpretation and voice, which has indeed drawn me toward the Poetry Out Loud program.

Becoming a Redwood By Dana Gioia

Stand in a field long enough, and the sounds

start up again. The crickets, the invisible

toad who claims that change is possible,

And all the other life too small to name.

First one, then another, until innumerable

they merge into the single voice of a summer hill.

Yes, it’s hard to stand still, hour after hour,

fixed as a fencepost, hearing the steers

snort in the dark pasture, smelling the manure.

And paralyzed by the mystery of how a stone

can bear to be a stone, the pain

the grass endures breaking through the earth’s crust.

Unimaginable the redwoods on the far hill,

rooted for centuries, the living wood grown tall

and thickened with a hundred thousand days of light.

The old windmill creaks in perfect time

to the wind shaking the miles of pasture grass,

and the last farmhouse light goes off.

Something moves nearby. Coyotes hunt

these hills and packs of feral dogs.

But standing here at night accepts all that.

You are your own pale shadow in the quarter moon,

moving more slowly than the crippled stars,

part of the moonlight as the moonlight falls,

Part of the grass that answers the wind,

part of the midnight’s watchfulness that knows

there is no silence but when danger comes.

The Legend By Garrett Hongo

In Chicago, it is snowing softly

and a man has just done his wash for the week.

He steps into the twilight of early evening,

carrying a wrinkled shopping bag

full of neatly folded clothes,

and, for a moment, enjoys

the feel of warm laundry and crinkled paper,

flannellike against his gloveless hands.

There’s a Rembrandt glow on his face,

a triangle of orange in the hollow of his cheek

as a last flash of sunset

blazes the storefronts and lit windows of the street.

He is Asian, Thai or Vietnamese,

and very skinny, dressed as one of the poor

in rumpled suit pants and a plaid mackinaw,

dingy and too large.

He negotiates the slick of ice

on the sidewalk by his car,

opens the Fairlane’s back door,

leans to place the laundry in,

and turns, for an instant,

toward the flurry of footsteps

and cries of pedestrians

as a boy—that’s all he was—

backs from the corner package store

shooting a pistol, firing it,

once, at the dumbfounded man

who falls forward,

grabbing at his chest.

A few sounds escape from his mouth,

a babbling no one understands

as people surround him

bewildered at his speech.

The noises he makes are nothing to them.

The boy has gone, lost

in the light array of foot traffic

dappling the snow with fresh prints.

Tonight, I read about Descartes’

grand courage to doubt everything

except his own miraculous existence

and I feel so distinct

from the wounded man lying on the concrete

I am ashamed.

Let the night sky cover him as he dies.

Let the weaver girl cross the bridge of heaven

and take up his cold hands.
IN MEMORY OF JAY KASHIWAMURA

Malia Graciani, first runner-up at Pacific Grove High School, recited the following poem. She will represent us should Arwa Awan be unable to attend the competition at the State level.

Ecology By Jack Collom

Jack Collom, “Ecology” from Red Car Goes By: Selected Poems 1955-2000, published by Tuumba Press. Copyright © 2001 by Jack Collom. Reprinted by permission of the author.