Poetry slam

BY KATE PASTOR

Wherefore art thou, Horace Mann schollars?

Why, in the Shakespeare garden reciting sonnets, of course.

On an unseasonably temperate afternoon last week, students gathered on a green clearing surrounded by plants and trees found in Shakespeare’s literature.

Some thumbed their places in books as they waited their turns. Others had committed the verses to memory for their debut in this year’s first Shakespeare Club event.

The group’s numbers were boosted on this day by Harry Bauld’s decision to assign his class to attend and for each student to read or recite a sonnet. So for 45 poetry-packed minutes, the rhythm of iambic pentameter gripped the garden.

Sonnets have 14 lines, each with 10 syllables.

Mr. Bauld says instead of using an anthology approach, he assigns the class to examine a few poets in depth, starting with about six weeks of studying all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

So HM students — some in skinny jeans and calf-high boots — were prepared for the occasion. In addition to the English class, there were about 20 to 25 club members present, and as with most groups of students persuaded by teachers to recite poetry, there were the mumblers, the hard-to-hears and the fast-talkers. But there were also some prized performances.

Some had rehearsed their sonnets — lyrical poems or “little songs” — to perfection and presented them with theatrics, while others waited with bated breath for a student, teacher, anybody with a book, to break their pregnant pauses by feeding them their next lines.

David Schiller, head of the upper division, and Mr. Bauld showed how well versed they were when it comes to poetry. Mr. Schiller recited Shakespeare’s Sonnet 129 before he goaded Mr. Bauld to dare read his own sonnet after what Mr. Schiller considered Shakespeare’s best.

They stood side-by-side on the clearing for dramatic effect.

Sonnet 129

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,

Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight,

Past reason hunted, and no sooner had

Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait

On purpose laid to make the taker mad;

Mad in pursuit and in possession so;

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;

Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

One Twenty Nine A.M.

You got it backwards on desire. It’s shame that sucks. And love? Whatev. I do know lust is lovely, true, biology. I blame the church, of course, then poetry; don’t trust these guys in fancy hats who claim they’re straight.

Among the couplings you and luck have had, the dreamy and deceived laid flesh as bait to wake the wolf of love. Wanna get (go) mad?

Chase love. You can take lust in hand — just so — but worship needs illusion more extreme than ravishing, less cleanly dirty. Whoa!

That way nightmare lies if not a dream, another bucket down the dried-up well of longing. One more time: take me to hell.

This is part of the November 5, 2009 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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