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Executive Message
About the Contest

Names
Poems
Schools

Names
Poems
Schools

Partners
Sponsors

2006 Poetry Out Loud Contest in Ohio

Contestant Poems

Emily Astorian � Granville High School

�Forgetfulness� by Billy Collins

�Catch a Little Rhyme� by Eve Merriam

�Advice to a Prophet� by Richard Wilbur

Jackson Hille � Columbus Alternative High School

�A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General� by Jonathan Swift

�Altruism� by Molly Peacock

�Forgetfulness� by Billy Collins

Lee Horton � Mount Gilead High School

�Eagle Poem� by Joy Harjo

�Famous� by Naomi Shihab Nye

�Ways of Talking� by Ha Jin

Robert Jones � Eastmoor Academy High School

�The Negro Speaks of Rivers� by Langston Hughes

�Broken Promises� by David Kirby

�To My Mother� by Wendell Berry

Jon Lamotte � Bishop Hartley High School

�Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening� by Robert Frost

��Hope� is the thing with feathers�� by Emily Dickinson

�Trees� by Joyce Kilmer

Casey Osman � Westland High School

�Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night� by Dylan Thomas

�We Wear the Mask� by Paul Laurence Dunbar

�Let it Be Forgotten� by Sarah Teasdale

Meredith Smith � Thomas Worthington High School

�Still I Rise� by Maya Angelou

�Beautiful Black Men� by Nikki Giovonni

�Bilingual/Bilingue� by Rhina P. Espaillat

Famous

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

Naomi Shihab Nye

�Famous� from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). Copyright � 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Used by permission of the author.

Source: Words under the Words: Selected Poems (Far Corner Books, 1995).