Slam+poetry+-+Taylor+Mali


 * media type="youtube" key="_1MHVqAWGmI" height="315" width="420"Undivided attention **

A grand piano wrapped in quilted pads by movers,

tied up with canvas straps - like classical music's

birthday gift to the criminally insane - is gently nudged without its legs

out an eighth-floor window on 62nd street. It dangles in April air from the neck of the movers' crane,

Chopin-shiny black lacquer squares

and dirty white crisscross patterns hanging like the second-to-last

note of a concerto played on the edge of the seat,

the edge of tears, the edge of eight stories up going over, and

I'm trying to teach math in the building across the street. Who can teach when there are such lessons to be learned?

All the greatest common factors are delivered by

long-necked cranes and flatbed trucks

or come through everything, even air.

Like snow. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; text-decoration: none;">See, snow falls for the first time every year, and every year

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; text-decoration: none;">my students rush to the window

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; text-decoration: none;">as if snow were more interesting than math,

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; text-decoration: none;">which, of course, it is. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; text-decoration: none;">So please. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; text-decoration: none;">Let me teach like a Steinway,

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; text-decoration: none;">spinning slowly in April air,

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; text-decoration: none;">so almost-falling, so hinderingly

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; text-decoration: none;">dangling from the neck of the movers' crane.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; text-decoration: none;">So on the edge of losing everything. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; text-decoration: none;">Let me teach like the new snow, falling.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; text-decoration: none;"> I believe the theme to this poem is even if you are good at something, there is always someone or something better, adn that you must puush yourself to equal or become better that that. In the poem he is saying that a piano being lowered from a building is more interesting that him. He is saying that he is less interesting than the first snowfall. The very last line of the poem he says let me teach like the snow, falling. He wants to improve himself. Some keywords and phrases are "the edge", "snow", and "every year". <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; text-decoration: none;"> Some portic devices are similes; Crisscross patterns hanging like the second to last note of a concierto, let me teach like the snow, falling. Imagery; <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; text-decoration: none;">Chopin-shiny black lacquer squares, the edge of tears, the edge of eight stories up going over. Oxymoron; Who can teach when there are such lessons to be learned?