recitation - connor chapman

First of all, I love Sharon Mesmer. She's funny. Annoying Diabetic Bitch is funny.

Long ago, I had a discussion with my friend about the effect of poetry versus music with lyrics. I argued that poetry was a wasted art form (mind you, this was long before I set foot on any college campus—I have since learned from my mistake), and that songs with lyrics were the ultimate deluxe form of poetry. He argued that poetry without a melody could be interpreted more ways, and was therefore not a wasted art form. I had to admit, he got me there, and I promise there is a point to this anecdote. When this was assigned, I thought immediately back to this conversation, and then again to the two poems I had to memorize in second grade: a poetry is merely music without melody, song without tunes that don't come directly from the cadence of the words, and that's how I chose to memorize it. There are few songs on my Recently Played playlist in my iTunes library that I don't know the words to, and I decided that I would do the exact same thing with Annoying Diabetic Bitch: repeat, repeat, and repeat again. What words repeat, what phrases? Recite the poem over and over, over and over, over and over, especially the parts I had a habit of screwing up. How did the lines fit together, how did the words create the sentence flow so that I could express it properly I looked up the poem, and found a video of Sharon Mesmer reading the poem at a flarf festival, but she omitted some lines and switched some wordings around, so I tried not to listen to her read it too much, but I did often on my way to and from class, the frat house, my dorm, Starbucks, whatever. I'm also the kind of guy who sings aloud whenever he so desires, so I did the same thing with this: I quietly recited the poem over and over under my breath in class and to and from the same places. It was more difficult than memorizing a song, but it required more specific attention. You can just glisten by with a melody, but I had to pay attention to where Mesmer fit in phrases like "diabetic," "diabetes," "bitch," who she was describing, how often those things were repeated, what have you. Also, I had to think about which arts of the sentences to properly stress, and maybe put my own twist on it compared to Mesmer's reading.

But like I said: it's just like remembering the words to a song, just with no melody. And now, just like my other favorite songs, it's in my repertoire, ready to spout about.