Peter Barnum
Toastmasters CC#6: Spoken Poetry  

I’ve always enjoyed literature and poetry.  When a lot of people think of 
poetry, they think of things like this limerick by Gelett Burgess,

“I wish that my room had a floor!
I don't so much care for a door,
But this crawling around
Without touching the ground
Is getting to be quite a bore!”

But I’ve never really been big on rhyming in serious poetry.  My favorite 
poems are more like finely worded literature.  I love reading and 
listening to the words ebb and flow, and feeling the imagery grow.  Three 
of my favorite English language poems are Jack Keroac’s “On the road”, 
Nissa Holtkamp’s “Pome”, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”.  
These poems are all special, in that they seem to be made to spoken out 
loud, and I’d like to share parts of them with you, and what they mean to 
me.  

Let’s start with “On the Road”.  This was actually an entire book, but it 
reads like a poem.  It’s supposedly an autobiography of Keroac’s life, in 
which he travels around the US and talks about life and how he sees it.  
In fact it flows just like life.  Unlike a standard Toastmaster’s speech, 
even the short segment I’ll read tries to fit in more than the standard 
three main points, and the rhythm of the words is more important than 
good pauses.

Keroac On the road

So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down 
river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all 
that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West 
Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity 
of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land 
where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and 
don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? The evening star must be drooping 
and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the 
coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups 
the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's 
going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old.

Long, flowing sentences gives a feeling of peace and relaxation.  Another 
style of poetry, spoken word, is often short and abrupt.  Rather than 
stringing sentences together, it often breaks them up into pieces, for 
emphasis.  Nissa Holtkamp writes powerful, angry prose, such as in Pome.
 
Nissa Holtkamp's: Pome
I wash my pomes on a rock, beat and bleach
The rhythm out. Hang them in the nodding
Sun - shoreline gently knocking like a
Metronome. I knock my poems to the ground
In a helpless drunken tear. Stubborn and
Taunting, collapse into nothing. Confess
To an upholstered ottoman, counting
Notches on my flask. I burn my poems at
The stake to light the moral way. Roll in
Ashes, wash in the unspoiled lake. Sisters,
Rivals, grab on sloping territory.
Simulating decorum, slurs like ants
On the kitchen counter, snuffed from every
Careful thumb. My poems are pathetic, I
Hate each and every stupid one. But they
Keep calling me closer, slapping, clawing,
Pulling readers to their careless sanctum.

I know I said earlier about how I don’t usually go for rhymes in poetry, 
but some classics really pulled it off.  Sometimes you can combine 
rhyming with a great story.  Take Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “Kubla Khan”.  
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !

Poetry covers a wide variety of styles, from Keoac to Holtkamp to 
Coleridge, to hundreds or thousands of other great poets.  Some works are 
long and flowing, others are short and abrupt.  It can make you happy or 
sad, excited or relaxed.  And even though few would make good 
Toastmasters speeches, we can learn a lot about different ways of 
speaking by studying them.