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?