Slam+Poetry

1. Search "Taylor Mali" on Youtube. Listen and watch to several poems. Choose one that you un derstand and that "speaks" to you. 2. Create a new page on your wiki called “Slam Poetry” media type="youtube" key="pKyIw9fs8T4" height="288" width="345" align="left"
 * 1) embed the video onto your page.
 * 2) On your page discuss the use of poetic devises. Discuss the overall meaning of the poem (theme). Discuss why you choose this poem. Identify key words and phrases. Of course, use specific examples from the poem!
 * hint you may be able to find the text for your poem on his websit

In case you hadn’t realised,it has somehow become uncool to sound like you know what you’re talking about? Or believe strongly in what you’re, like, saying? Invisible question marks and parenthetical you know’s and you know what I’m sayings have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences? Even when those sentences aren’t, like, questions? Declarative sentences – so-called because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true, ok as opposed to other things that are, like, totally, you know, not -they’ve been infected by a this tragically cool and totally hip interrogative tone? As if I’m saying, don’t think I’m a nerd just because I’ve, like, noticed this; ok I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions,I’m just, like, inviting you to join me on the band wagon of my own uncertainty What has happened to our conviction? Where are the limbs out on which we once walked? Have they been, like, chopped down with the rest of the rain forest? you know? Or do we have, like, nothing to say? Has society just become so filled with these conflicting feelings of ‘nugh’. . .That we’ve just gotten to the point where we’re the most aggressively inarticulate generation to come along since. . .you know, a long time ago! So I implore you, I entreat you and I challenge you to speak with conviction. To say what you believe in a manner that be speaks the determination with which you believe it. Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker, it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.You’ve got to speak with it, too.

The Poetic devices that Taylor Mali uses are ones that relate to how people talk i n slang and so casually. In this poem he is saying that people have to speak with more conviction. When he says "Has society just become so filled with these conflicting feelings of ‘nugh’", he uses Onomatopoeia to describe how people use sounds to describe how they feel. When I heard him say "Where are the limbs out on which we once walked? Have they been, like, chopped down with the rest of the rain forest?" I found it very interesting because W hen I was smaller, before middle school, no one used to talk like that. We talked normally but then all of a sudden people used shorten words an sound affects instead of words. He relates how this stuff just vanishes like how the rain forest's were cut down. When he says that it's a band wagon he's right. That shows that lots of people now talk like that. The P oetic devices show how people have changed the way they talk.

This poem's theme is that people dont talk like there trying to make a point! People talk casually and not really caring about what it sounds like. And Taylor Mali thinks that people need to talk with more conviction. I choose this poem because it's totally true. Almost everyone in high school talks like Taylor Mali's examples. We use sland and noises to desribe how we feel. No one really talks strongly like there trying to make a point. If everyone talk with conviction everything would be a lot different. If people talked with more conviction we would probably be better at home work. This poem relates to how people now a days talk so casually and lazy.

You make many good points and support them with evidence from the poem. Be sure to proof read carefully! 27/36