slam+poetry

media type="youtube" key="44sXwJgqUyc?fs=1" height="385" width="480" The title (On Girls Lending Pens) makes me think that the poem might be about girls lending pens, maybe the author needs to borrow one. It turns out that the author does need to borrow a pen when he gets to class because he forgot his and so he turns to the girl sitting next to him and asks her for a pen. She then offers him twenty but when he asks for any particular pen she wont let him have any because they are all too special in a different way. She goes on and on about why he can't have each pen and finally he gives up and decides "to go unprepared". At first I didn't think there is much meaning behind the surface value because I thought it was written mainly to be funny. I still think is was written to be funny but I think the poet is making a statement about the differences he sees in girls and boys in his classroom (he used to be a teacher). I think that because it is clever and short and the way he read it wasn't as serious as he read some of his other poems. When he reads some of his other more serious poems he takes more pauses and seems a little bit more dramatic and much more serious. At one point while reading his poems he almost started laughing himself, and unlike his poem "What Teacher's Make" where he walked onto the stage quietly and then recited his poem with a lot of passion and energy and then when he was finished he looked drained and as if he had just drained his soul. After the "On Girls Lending Pens" however he seemed energized and happy. The title was just what it seemed to be, it was a poem about a girl lending pens. I thought it was great that the poet used twenty different pens in his poem after saying that the girl brought out twenty pens. I think the theme of the poem was comparing girls to boys. The boy doesn't care about what color the pen is but the girl is extremely selective and in the end is too selective, it's as if she just wanted to show off all her pens. I very much enjoyed the poem.