flashback to friday

On Friday, I was at a suburban school where a young man did a presentation on Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." It is a classic, and I remember listening to Frost, himself, recite the poem on a record player in one of my junior high school teacher's classroom. Yawn. I was bored.

The young man who presented, too, read the poem and, I must say, did a better job than Frost on his own poem.

The above rendition adds even more life to the classic.

I guess I'm posting this because there's a tremendous difference between reading a poem, hearing a poem, performing a poem, and living a poem. I worry at times that students in school are getting the record player version of poetry that bored me to death when I was young. I much prefer hip-hop renditions of vibrant slams in the 21st century. But that is just me. Words are emotional, so why read them without emotion.

Blah Blah Blah.