I dare you to read four poems.

My friend Becky is having a Read Aloud event tonight (or it might have been yesterday--I'm pretty sure it was this weekend). It sounds like it's kind of like an open mike night with mostly poetry and some other stuff.

I graciously volunteered to supply her with some poems that I thought would be fun to be read aloud and she said, "Well, I guess that's okay." So you, lucky readers, will now get to see the few I selected for her. I picked them because I think they are fun and readily accessible to an audience. Some poems you have to study to get their awesomeness, and those do very poorly in a read aloud setting. So the ones I picked are easy to get from one out loud reading. Also, they are from top notch authors (with the exception of St.Vincent Millay who I think is considered not as serious as the others).

Hate poem by Julie Sheehan
I always presented this one to my BYU freshman on Valentine's day. It cracked them up.

Adam and Eve's Dog by Richard Garcia
This is funny and then awesome.

Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell
This is my current favorite poem. When I first read it I thought, "Ugh. There is nothing more boring that a poem about a work of art. Especially when it's just of a torso of a statue. Lalalalala so boring." But then I got to the last line and that last line is killer. I should have expected it to be awesome because Rilke rocks everyone's socks off. Even though he's dead.

Intention to escape from him by Edna St. Vincent Millay This is a fun break up poem. My freshman girls really liked it. I memorized it my freshman year in preparation for my heart someday being broken. maybe if Chris ever leaves me we can all get together and wear all his extra berets (he won't take them because he'll have his Stetson) and read this poem while sipping nonalcoholic wine. I was going to say sparkling cider, but that doesn't seem so appropriate for the mood.