by Caciques Annie B. and Marius
Annie: Today I was truly inspired. In our Literature class, we had to write a 12 line “Found” poem, relating to the current book we’re reading, Omeros. In a “Found” poem, the idea is to find words or lines from a piece of work that stick out to you, and create a poem out of them. In this assignment, we were told to do this within our most recent assignment of reading from Omeros. Seeing as it wasn’t a graded assignment, I assumed most people would throw 12 lines about Achille’s identity struggles onto a sheet of paper ten minutes before class… but I was wrong. I was in awe as I sat in listening to the poems people had written in class the next day. Everyone had created such incredible pieces, and it really showed me how much people care about this place we’re in. It showed me that we really are in an incredible place with incredible power, and the fact that everyone put so much effort into their work was incredibly inspiring. One poem especially stuck out to me; Jane Drinkard wrote a phenomenal poem referencing the pain and inner struggles that protagonist Achille faced in Omeros. I was struck by the power in her words, and I want to share those words on a larger scale because I think her talent shows just how inspiring The Island School can be.
The Skeleton- a Found Poem
Jane Drinkard
Identity. A skeleton, already slightly filled when we arrive.
History packed down to leave room for our own findings.
Time is the metre, memory the only plot.
And over time, identity was unraveled.
Alas, Now each man was a nation to himself, without mother, father, brother.
The skeleton’s shadow face swayed by the ochre ripples seemed homesick for the history ahead.
It knew that it’s bones would soon be buried, under the polluted mulch of material.
Those stars were too fixed in heaven to care, but sometimes he wished that he was as far as they were.
The skeleton grappled for it’s purpose, it looked down upon its fragile bones and ripped them apart himself, rib by rib.
He didn’t recognize the spindly white he was destroying just as sunrise forgets a star.
He felt under observance from very old eyes.
He turned around to find a human staring back.
Marius: Today, October 13th we had a tiring long morning exercise. Waking up at 6:00 in the morning isn’t as easy as it may seem like. It is usually on Saturdays that we do the long morning exercises, but due to the fact that we are doing the PSAT’s the whole of Saturday morning, we had our long morning exercise today. Long morning exercises last from 6:30 in the morning till 8:00. There are two groups of morning exercise: the run track, who are doing a half marathon run at the end of the semester, and the swim track, who are swimming four miles at the end of the semester. I am part of the swim track, and this morning we swam around 2 miles. We started swimming at the dock, where all the boats are stationed, and we swam all the way to a pole which is close by to a big bridge leading to the marina. On the way back however, we had to swim around the triangle cut, instead of the normal just swimming across. The triangle cut is basically just a small triangular shaped cut that should take around ten to fifteen minutes to swim around. Something we always have to take into account when we are swimming, is the current and so time wise we need to calculate when we should start heading back from where we are. If we come back before 8:00, we do some abs workout. As tiring as the swims are, I always feel great after a long swim.