Well, now I do, because I looked it up, and it's an archaic term for "in truth." Another handy fact I learned during this very poetic week, during which I've been blogging here at BAP, or BAmPo, or whatever you want to call it, as well as judging a poetry contest for public high school seniors, one of whom used the fucking word "forsooth" in her poem (entrant's names have been blacked out, but I'm going out on a limb to guess that this poet is female, or a transgendered person, because the narrator of the poem is a girl – or, rather, "a maiden").
I took a point off for "forsooth." I’m sorry. I know it's just me exercising my own poetic prejudice, but "forsooth" can not possibly have any personal meaning to this young poet, unless that personal meaning is "if I use this word, I will sound poetic." It stinks of shortcutting, to me; it stinks of fancypants bullshittery, and that is one thing this judge will not tolerate. I say: Write from the goddamn heart, or go home.
I am also taking points off for poems where the speakers kill themselves at the end, and there are a bunch of those. It's never too early to teach kids that poetry doesn’t have to end in suicide.
The poets who get the best scores from me are the ones who obviously love language, the ones whose rhythms have me nodding my head from the first line, the ones whose rhymes beat the shit out of Eminem's, or any of the other rappers who have the gall to rhyme "me" with "me." The kids you can just see, slumped against their locker in the hallway, scribbling something down on a notebook balanced on their knee between classes. They didn't write a poem because their teacher told them about this contest; they heard about the contest, and they ran home and sifted through pages of their best work, their hearts beating so hard their tongues throbbed in their mouths. These are the ones I want to call on the phone and say, Hey, you made me gasp, you made me well up with tears, you made me well up with pride. Hey, teach me what you know; I'm afraid I've forgotten it.
Of course, the top score goes to the kid with the sestina.
I told you I was prejudiced.
-- JE
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