Young bards tread the boards

Hanging out around teenagers always proves enlightening. Even better when they get poetic.

Last month the Montana Arts Council staged the finals in Helena for high schoolers taking part in Poetry Out Loud. For a dozen students from Whitefish to Polson the drama started in mid-February, when they came to the Northwest Montana History Museum to recite poetry and compete for a spot at state. 

Accuracy judge Monica Grable of the Montana Arts Council, which organizes the program as part of the 21-year-old initiative from the National Endowment for the Arts, gave the ground rules and pointers to the contestants. 

"There are artful ways to try to remember the recitation,” she said. “Don’t jump immediately to ‘Prompt, please.’ Keep yourself cool — no one’s going to know.” 

In two heats, with two different poems, the students stepped onstage and recited from memory to an audience made up of poetry fans, relatives, previous helpers of the program and a couple of curious interlopers. 

Contestants pick from a designated anthology of poems. Like art students copying the masters in museums, these budding poetry fans had studied the work of pros, from Walt Whitman to Amy Lowell, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Alice Duer Miller, and received foundational knowledge of the form.  

Cassidy Krack opened with “On Pain” by Khalil Gibran. Things got pleasurable from there, with a suite of sky selections: “The Light of Stars” (Longfellow), “Under the Harvest Moon” (Carl Sandburg) and “Rain Music” (Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr.). For this last one student Daisy Anderson modulated her voice like rain, making a shower of words. Her voice rose and fell, through staccato drops then a hush.  

Some had to utter the dread “Prompt, please,” a few more than once. Others hadn’t yet learned to channel nervous energy into confidence.  

The event showed the power of shared art. A recited poem needs speaker and listener to work its magic. Social media platforms offer the opportunity to shout one-sided communications into virtual crowded rooms, but here were real ears, expressions and minds navigating language in real time and life.  

Afterward, Judge Brian Schott explained why he founded the Whitefish Review 18 years ago: “Writing can be a lonely endeavor. Bringing people together is important to me.” The students scooped up copies of the latest issue he brought to share. 

The other judge, Hannah Kauffman, instructs at Flathead Valley Community College, where poetry is her favorite subject to teach. “Writing helps you pay attention,” she told the students. Kauffman recalled the observation of her mentor (and former state poet laureate) Lowell Jaeger about announcing oneself as a poet and the inevitable reaction: either “Oh, that’s nice” and a subject change, or a subject change. 

Here no one seemed averse to verse. 

Grable announced the three who would go on to the finals, plus an alternate. They’d have to perform one more poem than the two required for this regional event.  

Jessi Wood, probably fresh from the slopes in her Blacktail Mountain Ski Area jacket, beamed at daughter Ryvr’s performance and indicated an additional poem would be no problem. “We’re sticking with Longfellow,” she said. “She doesn’t do anything halfway.” 

Margaret E. Davis, executive director of the Northwest Montana History Museum, can be reached at [email protected].