 Our next recitation will be by Hailey Bouchard from South Burlington High School. Personal by Tony Hoagland. Don't take it personal, they said, but I did. I took it all quite personal. The breeze and the river and the color of the fields, the price of grapefruit and stamps, the wet hair of women in the rain and I cursed what hurt me and I praised what gave me joy. The most simple minded of possible responses. The government reminded me of my father with its deafness and its laws and the weather reminded me of my mom with her tropical squalls. Enjoy it while you can. They said of happiness. Think first. They said of talk. Get over it. They said at the school of broken hearts. But I couldn't and I didn't. And I don't believe in the clean break. I believe in the compound fracture served with the sauce of dirty regret. I believe in saying it all and taking it all back and saying it again for good measure while the air fills up with I'm sorry's like wheeling birds and the trees look seasick in the wind. Oh, life, can you blame me for making a scene? You were that yellow caboose, the moon disappearing over a ridge of cloud. I was the dog chained in some fool's backyard barking and barking trying to convince everything else to take it personal too. This recitation is by Hailey Bouchard, a senior at South Burlington High School. Hailey tells us she drives her teachers crazy, but she also loves reading Shakespeare and knows American sign language. The death of allegory, Billy Collins, hearing what became of all those tall abstractions that used to pose, robe and statuesque in paintings and parade about on the pages of the Renaissance, displaying their capital letters like license plates. Truth cantering on a powerful horse. Chastity, eyes downcast, fluttering with veils. Each one with marble come to life, a thought in a coat. Courtesy, bowing with one hand always extended. Villainy, sharpening an instrument behind a wall. Reason with her crown and constancy, alert behind a helm. They're all retired now, consigned to a Florida for tropes. Justice is there, standing by an open refrigerator. Valor lies in bed, listening to the rain. Even death has nothing to do but mend his cloak and hood. And all their props are locked away in a warehouse. Hour glasses, globes, blindfolds and shackles. Even if you called them back, there are no places left for them to go. No garden of mirth or bower of bliss. The valley of forgiveness is lined with condominiums and chainsaws are howling in the forest of despair. Here, on the table near the window, is a face of peonies and next to it, black binoculars and a money clip. Exactly the kind of thing we now prefer, objects that sit quietly on a line in lower case, themselves and nothing more. A wheelbarrow, an empty mailbox, a razor blade resting in a glass ashtray. As for the others, the great ideas on horseback and the long-haired virtues in embroidered gowns, it looks as though they have traveled down that road you see on the final page of story books. The one that winds up a green hillside and disappears into an unseen valley. Where everyone must be fast asleep. Our next recitation will be by Tate Clark from the Sharon Academy. Very Large Moth by Craig Arnold after DHL. Your first thought when the light snaps on and the black wings clatter about the kitchen is a bat. The clear part of your mind considers rabies. The other part does not consider, knows only to startle and cower away from the slap of its wings. Though it is soon clearly not a bat, but a moth and harmless. Still you are shy of it. It clings to the hood of the stove, not black but brown. Its orange eyes sparkle like televisions. Its leg joints are large enough to count. How could you kill it? Where would you hide the body? A creature so solid must have room for a soul. And if this is so, why not in a creature half its size or half its size again and so on down to the ants? Clearly it must be saved. Caught in a shopping bag and rushed to the front door, afraid to crush it, feeling the plastic rattle loosened into the night air. It batters the porch light, throwing fitful shadows around the landing. That was a really big moth is all you can say to the doorman who has watched your whole performance with a smile. The half compassion and half horror we feel for the creatures we want not to hurt and prefer not to touch. Our next recitation is by Hannah Funk from Mount Abraham Union High School. Windigo by Louise Erdrich for Angela. The Windigo is a flesh eating wintry demon with a man buried deep inside of it. In some Chippewa stories a young girl vanquishes this monster by forcing boiling lard down its throat, thereby releasing the human at the core of ice. You knew I was coming for you little one when the kettle jumped into the fire. Towels flapped on the hooks and the dog crept off, groaning to the deepest part of the woods. In the hackles of dry brush a thin laughter started up. Mother scolded the food warm and smooth in the pot and called you to eat. But I spoke in the cold trees. New one I have come for you child, hide and lie still. The sumac pushed sour red cones through the air copper burned in the raw wood. You saw me drag toward you. Oh touch me I murmured and licked the soles of your feet. You dug your hands into my pale melting fur. I stole you off a huge thing in my bristling armor. Steam rolled from my wintry arms. Each leaf shivered from the bushes we passed until they stood naked spread like the clean spines of fish. Then your warm hands hummed over and shuffled themselves full of the ice and the snow. I would darken and spill all night running until at last morning broke the cold earth and I carried you home a river shaking in the sun. Our next recitation will be by Lee Gallagher a sophomore at Mount Anthony Union High School. Lee enjoys painting, drawing, acting, reading and singing. Life in a love by Robert Browning. Escape me never beloved while I am I and you are you so long as the world contains us both me the loving and you the loath while the one eludes must the other pursue. My life is at a fault at last I fear it seems too much like a fate indeed though I try my best I shall scarce succeed but what if I fail of my purpose here it is but to keep the nerves at strain to dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall and baffled get up and begin again so the chase takes up one's life that's all while look but once from your farthest bound at me so deep in the dust and dark no sooner the old hope goes to ground than a new one straight to the self-same mark. I shape me ever removed. Our next recitation will be by Eliza Goodell a sophomore at Oxbow High School. Eliza loves to play music, sail and she also loves dancing. Luke Havergall by Edwin Arlington Robinson. Go to the western gate Luke Havergall. There were the vines cling crimson on the wall and in the twilight wait for what will come. The leaves will whisper there of her and some like flying words will strike you as they fall but go and if you listen she will call. Go to the western gate Luke Havergall Luke Havergall. No there is not a dawn in eastern skies to rift that fiery night that's in your eyes but there where western glooms are gathering the dark will end the dark if anything. God slays himself with every leaf that flies and hell is more than half of paradise. No there is not a dawn in eastern skies in eastern skies. Out of a grave I come to tell you this. Out of a grave I come to quench the kiss that flames upon your forehead with a glow that blinds you to the way that you must go. Yes there is yet one way to where she is bitter but one that faith may never miss. Out of a grave I come to tell you this to tell you this. There is the western gate Luke Havergall. There are the crimson leaves upon the wall. Go for the winds are tearing them away nor think to riddle the dead words they say nor any more to feel them as they fall but go and if you trust her she will call. There is the western gate Luke Havergall Luke Havergall. Our next recitation will be by Ekaterina Langlois from Bellows Free Academy Fairfax. The Albatross by Kate Bass. When I know you are coming home I put on this necklace glass beads on a silken thread a blue that used to match my eyes. I like to think I am remembering you. I like to think you don't forget. The necklace lies heavy on my skin. It clatters when I reach down to lift my screaming child. I swing her roll her in my arms until she forgets. The beads glitter in the flicker of a TV set as I sit her on my lap and wish away the afternoon. I wait until I hear a gate latch lift. The turn of key and lock. I sit amongst toys and unwashed clothes. I sit and she fingers the beads until you speak in a voice that no longer seems familiar. Only strange. I turn as our child tugs at the string. I hear a snap and a sound like falling rain. Ekaterina Langlois is a senior at Bellows Free Academy Fairfax. She loves cheerleading and can do a back flip. Domestic situation by Ernest Hilbert. Maybe you've heard about this. Maybe not. A man came home and chucked his girlfriend's cat in the wood chipper. This really happened. Dinner wasn't ready on time. A lot of other little things went wrong. He spat on her father who came out when he learned about it. He also broke her pinky, stole her checks, and got her sister pregnant. But she stood by him, stood strong through it all because she loved him. She loved him. You see, she actually said that and then she went and married him. She felt some unique call. Don't try to understand what another person means by love. Don't even bother. This recitation will be by Isabel Kotlowitz from Thetford Academy. Dear reader by Rita May-Rees, you have forgotten it all. You have forgotten your name, where you lived, who you loved, why. I am simply your nurse, terse and unlovely. I point to things and remind you what they are. Chair, book, daughter, soup. And when we are alone, I tell you what lies in each direction. This way is death and this way after a longer walk is death and that way is death. But you won't see it until it is right in front of you once after your niece had been to visit you and I said something about how you must love her, or she must love you, or something useless like that. You gripped my forearm in your terrible, swift hand and said she is everything. You gave me a shake, everything to me. And then you fell back into the well, deep in the well of everything. And I stand at the edge and call chair, book, daughter, soup. Isabel Kotlowitz is a senior at Thetford Academy. She likes to downhill ski, stargaze and read fantasy novels. She once spent three days and three nights alone in the snowy woods for a mountain solo school trip. Solitude by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone for the sad old earth must borrow its mirth but has trouble enough of its own. Sing and the hills will answer. Psy, it is lost on the air. The echoes bound to a joyful sound but shrink from voicing care. Rejoice and men will seek you. Grieve and they turn and go. They want full measure of all your pleasure but they do not need your woe. Be glad and your friends are many. Be sad and you lose them all. There are none to decline your nectared wine but alone you must drink life's gall. Feast and your halls are crowded. Fast and the world goes by. Succeed and give and it helps you live but no man can help you die. There is room in the halls of pleasure for a large and lordly train but one by one we must all file on through the narrow aisles of pain. Our next recitation will be by Kaylee Osier from Green Mountain Union High School. Echo by Christina Rossetti. Come to me in the silence of the night. Come in the speaking silence of a dream. Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright as sunlight on a stream. Come back in tears. Oh memory. Hope. Love of finished years. Oh dream how sweet. Too sweet. Too bitter sweet. Whose awakening should have been in paradise where souls brimful of love abide and meet. Where thirsting longing eyes watch the slow door. That opening letting in lets out no more. Yet come to me in dreams that I may live my very life again though cold in death. Come back to me in dreams that I may give pulse for pulse. Breath for breath. Speak low. Lean low. As long ago my love how long ago. Kaylee is a senior at Green Mountain High School. She loves to sing and act and she's lived in five states. Domestic situation by Ernest Tilbert. Maybe you've heard about this. Maybe not. A man came home and shucked his girlfriend's cat into the woodchipper. Dinner this really happened. Dinner wasn't ready on time. A lot of other little things went wrong. He spacked on her father who came out when he learned about it. He also broke her pinky, stole her checks and got her sister pregnant. But she stood by him, stood strong through it all because she loved him. She loved him, you see. She actually said that and then she went and married him. She felt some unique call. Don't try to understand what another person means by love. Don't even bother. Our next recitation will be by Anna Van Dyne. Anna is a senior at Harwood Union High School. She loves learning, asking questions and visiting new places. She also loves oatmeal because it has endless possibilities. Monet refuses the operation by Liesl Mueller. Doctor, you say there are no halos around the street lights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age and affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the image of gas lamps as angels to soften and blur and finally banish the edges you regret I don't see. To learn that the line I called the horizon does not exist and sky and water so long apart are the same state of being. Fifty-four years before I could see Ruan Cathedral is built on parallel shafts of sun and now you want to restore my youthful errors fixed notions of top and bottom the illusion of three-dimensional space, wisteria, separate from the bridge it covers. What can I say to convince you the houses of parliament dissolve night after night to become the fluid dream of the Thames? I will not return to a universe of objects that don't know each other as if islands were not the lost children of one great continent. The world is flux and light becomes what it touches becomes water lilies on water above and below water becomes lilac and mauve and yellow and white and cerulean lamps small fists passing sunlight so quickly to one another that it would take long streaming hair inside my brush to catch it to paint the speed of light our weighted shapes these verticals burn to mix with air and change our bones skin clothes to gases doctor if only you could see how heaven poles are into its arms and how infinitely the heart expands to claim this world blue vapor without and