Great Barrington –– Since her freshman year at Monument Mountain Regional High School, junior Caroline Sprague has worked to pry her way inside Richard Hugo’s poem about attachment to memory, despair, and the way out of it. Degrees of Gray in Phillipsburg captured Sprague, and her recitation of it at the Poetry Out Loud state finals in Boston last Sunday captured the judges as well; it was one of three recitations that helped her become the 2015 Massachusetts state champion, now on her way to the nationals in Washington, D.C., on April 28 for an all-expenses paid trip.
Sprague was one of 24 students who made it to this final state level out of 20,000 total state competitors throughout the process, which began last fall in the schools.
“Once I made it to the top 6, I felt very resolved,” Sprague said. “The whole thing just became so beautiful. A total of 54 poems were recited by contestants on Sunday, I think — two each for all the 24, then 6 more, and all of them were beautiful.”
At the state semi-finals Sprague, 16, began with William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 15: When I Consider Everything That Grows. “I was drawn to the sonnet due to my extensive work with Shakespeare,” she said. Sprague has been passionate about theatre since she was very young, having performed in many local productions, including several years of Shakespeare & Company’s Fall Festival performances.
“There’s something so elegant and truthful about all of his work, Sonnet 15 in particular, and the poem was succinct and very sweet in contrast to my other two poems.”
At the state semi-finals and finals, Sprague recited The Golden Shovel by Terrance Hayes, which she said “is fascinating for so many reasons: the poem is rhythmic and bluesy and disenfranchised. The first half, set in 1981, is childlike but also very deeply felt. The second half, set in 1991, is extremely disorienting. I can’t trace any sort of narrative through it and that really interests me. It’s all about the emotion and musicality in that second half, and not so much about meaning.”
Sprague said she was “completely in love” with Hugo’s Degrees of Gray in Phillipsburg. “For so long it’s puzzled me and challenged me: it’s a poem that holds a lot of desolation and not, seemingly, any hope. I hadn’t gotten the poem out of my system so I chose it as my third poem and, thanks to my teacher Lisken Van Pelt Dus, I think I really understand it better now.”
Van Pelt Dus said that the poem wasn’t simply about despair and anger: “What emerged in our work on [Degrees of Gray] together was an understanding that the tone of the poem is actually more layered.”
Van Pelt Dus is a Monument High English teacher who has coached students, including Sprague, for the state rounds, and will travel to Washington with her for the nationals. “In the last stanza the speaker takes a stand against the despair, and the final images capture the possibility of hope even in the midst of bleakness and broken lives. Coming to this insight was difficult because it’s a difficult shift even for the speaker in the poem. It’s not an obvious shift to redemption, but a more subtle acknowledgement of the possibility of choosing beauty. Once Caroline saw this, it allowed her to develop a powerfully nuanced delivery that takes the listener through several emotional registers.”
She observed that Sprague’s “intellect, emotional intelligence, and theatrical talent and training allowed her to play with the material in many rich ways.”
“The program as a whole is so exciting to me,” Van Pelt Dus added. “To see significant numbers of our students engaging deeply with poetry and its sharing, and to see so many of our other students giving them attention and support in that endeavor.”
Van Pelt Dus likened the energy of the school finals to that found mostly in sports, and noted that “Monument is one of only a handful of schools who’ve been involved since almost the beginning, and there’s no other school that has reached the state finals more often than we.”
Poetry Out Loud began 10 years ago. It “celebrates the power of the spoken word and a mastery of public speaking skills while cultivating self-confidence and an appreciation of students’ literary heritage,” according to the organization’s website. The competitions foster a love and deep understanding of poetry.
It’s popular in the Bay State: Massachusetts ranked fourth in the nation for number of students participating, fifth in the nation for number of schools participating, and second in the nation for number of teachers participating. The program is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. The state finals were supported by the Huntington Theatre Company and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Sprague said she wasn’t sure why “the judges favor certain recitations over others,” but said her reason for participating was to convey the “emotion and meaning” in the poetry. “I really wanted to recite in a way that helped the audience feel and understand everything possible, and that must have translated.”
Sprague said the experience “has solidified for me the importance of art in my life. It’s easy for me to discount my propensity for drama as a hobby, but this is my passion. Sharing emotion with people is probably what I love to do most, and I think this experience has reinforced that I should be doing precisely that.”
Somehow the experience also melted away a need to “toil over perfection,” she said. “Success is defined in so many more ways than one. Everyone I’ve encountered in the competition so far has succeeded, so I shouldn’t stress so much in the future about ‘succeeding.’”
“Just being heard is enough.”
