The Raven - I Adore You

Today was very exciting. I went to a public speaking contest early this morning (a few minutes past eight o’clock). At the moment of arrival I realized that I didn’t have “The Raven and other poems" by Edgar Allen Poe with me, which was the book I was going to be reading out of for my interpretive reading. (How the interpretive reading category works is you pick a selection from a book of your choice, and you have an introduction of the selection you’re about to read and then a closing statement.) So, my older brother rushed it over, which was really sweet of him, I know he wasn’t planning on getting up that morning, so I ruined that pretty thoroughly.  

 
  When it was finally my turn to go up I opened with the following words to the judges: “I’m going to be doing quite a bit of acting: I’m going to be pretending I’m awake.” I wish I could say their laughter helped me from being too nervous, though I’m really glad they did laugh, because that would have been really awkward. I’ve had the awful experience of telling a joke in front of an audience and being met with silence, it’s not something you want to happen to you, let me tell you that.

  After I was about halfway through the poem I started to get lost in Poe’s wonderful writing and I calmed down, and had fun. I didn’t really practice the closure to my interpretive reading, however, I didn’t tell the judges and they didn’t need to know.

   Amazingly enough, I won the gold award in my category… It just shows that "The Raven" really is great... Shit, now I have to get ready for State next week; I might actually need to practice for that.