Slam+Poetry

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A grand piano wrapped in quilted pads by movers, tied up with canvas straps—like classical music’s birthday gift to the criminally insane— is gently nudged without its legs out an eighth‐floor window on 62nd street.
 * Undivided Attention **//by Taylor Mali//

It dangles in April air from the neck of the movers’ crane, Chopin-­‐shiny black lacquer squares and dirty white crisscross patterns hanging like the second‐to­‐last note of a concerto played on the edge of the seat, the edge of tears, the edge of eight stories up going over— it’s a piano being pushed out of a window and lowered down onto a flatbed truck!—and I’m trying to teach math in the building across the street.

Who can teach when there are such lessons to be learned? All the greatest common factors are delivered by long‐necked cranes and flatbed trucks or come through everything, even air. Like snow.

See, snow falls for the first time every year, and every year my students rush to the window as if snow were more interesting than math, which, of course, it is.

So please.

Let me teach like a Steinway, spinning slowly in April air,so almost-­‐falling, so hinderingly dangling from the neck of the movers’ crane. So on the edge of losing everything. Let me teach like the first snow, falling.

 Undivided Attention, in this poem Taylor Mali uses poetic devices that help creat images and symbolism that makes you think about his poem. It appears that he likes to use a lot of imagery, **//“A grand piano wrapped in quilted pads by movers, tied up with canvas straps.” //**not only that but the use of similes was recognizable, too **//“Let me teach like the first snow, falling.” //**I also found symbolism, the grand piano being more than just a piano being lifted by crane out of a window from a building across the street, but the main distraction of the class, and that’s basically what the meaning of the poem is. The poet is asking why does a piano thats being lifted out of a building across the street gets more attention than he’s receiving while trying to teach his class. I’ve chosen this poem because I can’t relate to the teacher, persay, but I can to the students. Being distracted by something more interesting than the subject that is being taught, but I can understand how the teacher would get frustrated by it.

Nice concluding sentence. Be sure to proof read carefully.

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