Poetry Alive!

For reasons too long and complicated to go into here, I recently had the opportunity to observe a short performance at a local middle school by a group called Poetry Alive! In case you think I am simply adding that ! for extra emphasis, please know that the ! is simply part of the group's name. And don't you know they earned ever ! of it.

Poetry Alive! is a group based out of North Carolina. It is made up of professional actors (and I mean that in every sense of the phrase) who go around the country acting out poems for schoolchildren.

Imagine, if you will, a cross between an Up With People member on crystal meth and an evangelical Christian who is really, really into Langston Hughes, and you will be able to picture the members of Poetry Alive! The two members I witnessed were a large African American man and a small white woman about the size of a teacup. Together, along with several unwilling children yanked from the audience, they acted out Thayer's "Casey at the Bat" and Edgar Allen Poe's "Bells" among many other poems that were the perfect mix of "classic" children's literature and PC diversity. Poetry Alive! also required audience participation. ("Okay, so, okay, so, when I throw my hands at you, you have to scream, `Bells!' Okay? Okay! Let's try it! Okay!")

It was unfuckingbelievable, people. The performance soon had these two professional actors drenched in sweat, throwing themselves around the library chairs, shouting and screaming and in general acting very, very excited about poetry! And the fact that poetry is alive! Both performers were very professional in their actorness in that they e-nun-ci-a-ted every word and spoke with a slight sort of British accent a la Madonna circa 2000 even though as far as I could tell these performers were not in fact British. They were very earnest. They somehow managed to have talkbacks about Poetry Alive! even though no one asked questions. It was amazing. It was incredible.

Poetry Alive!