Poetry Out Loud

I initially chose "Backdrop Addresses Cowboy" by Margaret Atwood because I really like the metaphors and similes, and how she used free verse. I like free verse poems best because they seem to have so much more meaning, and they seem less light and bubbly then rhyming poems. You can make even a depressing poem seem happy with rhyming. "Backdrop Addresses Cowboy" reminded me of something that Francesca Lia Block or Ellen Hopkins may write, with so much figurative language, I found it beautiful.

Once I started trying to read the poem aloud I had a few problems. I knew what I wanted it to sound like aloud, and how I wanted to read it, but it was hard to follow through, to remember every pause etc. I also had a lot of trouble memorizing it, because it was fairly long. I would always find certain parts where I would always forget a word, or what order to say the words, no matter what. Of course, after I read it out loud I can almost recite it perfectly, but getting up in front of the class it scary enough, It's hard to remember every word when you're still shaky at it.