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148 | dana gioia
was accustomed to the polite but hardly rapt attention one generally finds
at such events. The Folger audience was visibly engaged from start to finish,
something I have noticed consistently at all Poetry Out Loud competitions.
There is a special attention people—both competitors and spectators—
bring to competitive activities. The audience not only experiences the recitation,
but it pays special attention to the various qualities that guide the
best performances as it observes and compares the contestants. The citizens
of ancient Greece believed that competition encouraged excellence—not
only in sports but also in the arts. Poetry Out Loud demonstrates the soundness
of that idea.
That evening I noticed something else that has struck me at every subsequent
competition I have attended—namely how diverse the finalists
were. They came from every cultural and ethnic background with a disproportionate
number of first-generation Americans. They also comprised
every type of high school kid—jocks, scholars, actors, debaters, slackers,
class clowns, hipsters, gangbangers, and loners. Their passion and excellence
were simultaneously inspiring and chastening. I realized how much we
underestimate the potential of our teenagers, how little we often expect
from them, how, given the choice, they can astonish us. There was a reason
that poetry, especially memorization and recitation, had played such a large
part in education across the ages. Poetry awakens and develops the potential
of young hearts and minds.
VI.
Having escaped one cancellation notice, the program soon faced another.
The Arts Endowment felt that the best partners for the competition would
be state arts agencies, the official state institutions dedicated to arts and
arts education. The state agency executive directors listened to the idea
positively—not with great enthusiasm but with interest. If the NEA and
Poetry Foundation were going to invest additional money in state arts
budgets, the state agencies would consider giving the National Poetry
Recitation Contest a try. State arts education specialists, however, generally
disliked the program. They insisted that students would not willingly
memorize poems, that teachers would reject memorization as an antiquated,
even repressive technique, and that competition was anathema to
arts education. They suggested that the NEA should create a program in
which students would gather to read their own original poems without