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Executive Message
About the Contest

Names
Poems
Schools

Names
Poems
Schools

Partners
Sponsors

2006 Poetry Out Loud Contest in Ohio

Winner Poems

1st Place

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

2nd Place

Meredith Smith � Thomas Worthington High School

�Still I Rise� by Maya Angelou

�Beautiful Black Men� by Nikki Giovonni

�Bilingual/Bilingue� by Rhina P. Espaillat

3rd Place

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

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I�ve known rivers:
I�ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I�ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I�ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes, �The Negro Speaks of Rivers� from Collected Poems. Copyright � 1994 by The Estate of Langston Hughes. Reprinted with the permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated.

Source: Selected Poems (Random House, Inc., 1987).