Friday, March 13, 2015

Poetry Challenge 2015

On Monday night our school's literary magazine will host a poetry reading night. I told the students they could write prompts and put them in a hat this week. I told them I'd pick out of the hat on Friday and have to write and perform that poem for Monday.

Here's the prompt:





Here's the Poem:


THE EXTRA CREDIT POEM


You clamor for extra credit
Like seagulls on a greasy Italian sub wrapper
Mine, Mine, Mine
As if these piddly points are the difference between
heaven and hell
grace and damnation
Yale or jail
You are so focused on the two hundredth percentile point increments
That you may be oblivious to the subversive intentions of your devious instructor
to get you to think.
You want extra credit?
Ok.
How about you listen to a full hour of Radio Lab
Spend some time with my idol Jad the MacArthur Grant Genius
Or you could write a poem
better yet, how about a rap about rhetorical devices
And a power point
You know you could watch this documentary about language and its effect on the world?
Will I get Extra Credit?
How about you go watch your peers performing
Then review the show like you are Ben Brantley.
You don’t know who he is?
Find out.
But will I get extra credit?
Sure! Prompt writing challenger, find that out and you get 1 point higher on that paper you haven’t even submitted yet.
You sure are creeping your way to that ninety. Happy?
If I get extra credit.
You know, truthfully, there is, at least I believe,
and good thing, too, because of my chosen profession and all,
There is this thing called
Joy in Learning
Let me say that one more time
Joy in Learning
That’s with an L, people, like in my lovely name
and in words like library, lucidity, laudable, and life.
Joy in Learning
Not earning
percentiles on a spreadsheet
composite scores on college boards
plaques and cords and one more line on my activity sheet
What would happen instead if you
filled your head with knowledge
Not for a grade
Not for extra credit
But just because you love that feeling of synaptic explosions and connections
The cerebrum vibrating into barium induced glowing kaleidoscopic rainbows
Fireworks of intellectuality blazing a trail across the corpus callosum
Making sure that your Right Brain hadn’t Left that Brain Behind
Everyone needs incentives of course
Because who in their right mind or left brain would sit up on a Friday night and write a poem
If there wasn’t some kind of payoff
Like a 100 test grade
or some freebie points added to that quiz you probably should have studied for in the first place
I mean honestly.
No one’s going to do that for nothing in return.
Except maybe for a little polite applause.
A couple raucous huzzahs, perhaps.
Dare, I say, a standing O.
For Extra Credit?

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