MARCH 11 UPDATE: Kareem Sayegh placed in the top five at Thursday's Poetry Out Loud state finals in Springfield. For more details, click here.

CHAMPAIGN — Junior Kareem Sayegh won first place in the Poetry Out Loud regional competition held Saturday at the Champaign Public Library.

He recited two poems, Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago” and Aphra Behn’s “Love Armed.”

Sayegh will compete Thursday in the state finals at the Hoogland Center for the Arts in Springfield. The contest will begin at 10 a.m.

The state winner will advance to the national finals, to be held April 29 in Washington, D.C.

Poetry Out Loud is a national recitation contest that begins at the regional level in each state.

This is the first year that a contest has been held for students in the East Central Illinois area, according to Steven Bentz, director of operations for 40 North | 88 West, the Champaign County Arts, Culture, and Entertainment Council.

Saturday’s contest, which 40 North | 88 West sponsored, featured students from Uni, Centennial, and Paxton-Buckley-Loda high schools. Junior Cheng Luo also competed for Uni.

Susan Grey, a member of the Champaign Unit 4 School Board, and Aaron Ammons, a local poet, served as contest judges.

Each student chose two poems to recite. Sayegh described “Chicago” as a “confrontational poem but … also a really uplifting poem about the city and how great it is.”

He said “Love Armed,” his other choice, “provided a pretty good juxtaposition to ‘Chicago’ — it’s a flirtatious poem but also a kind of touching poem.”

For Sayegh, a student in Elizabeth Majerus’ Poetry class, the contest was a natural extension of his recent interest in the subject.

“Poetry has become a kind of newfound passion for me,” he said. “I’ve been writing a lot, I’ve been reading a lot, and I decided this would be a good way to kind of get into that.”

Sayegh needed about two hours to memorize “Chicago” — “It’s free verse so it’s just kind of hard to commit completely to memory,” he said — while “Love Armed” required 30 to 45 minutes.

But memorizing a poem is just the beginning for a contest like this.

“The most important thing to do is just recite it every day,” he said, “because then it becomes internalized, and then what you do when you go up is you don’t just say the poem, you kind of feel the poem and you let it express itself.”

And that’s the key, Sayegh explained.

“It’s just like music — you don’t just memorize the piece and the notes, because then you don’t get any emotion out of it,” he said.

“So what I do is I think about the poem, I think about it a lot. I’m explicating ‘Chicago’ for poetry class, and I’ve thought quite a bit about ‘Love Armed.’ And so you become intimate with the poem; you really kind of have a relationship with it and understand it. And then what you think of the poem really comes out when you say it.”

TEXTS OF THE POEMS KAREEM SAYEGH RECITED

CARL SANDBURG’S “CHICAGO”
HOG Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women
under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman
kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I
have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give
them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse
and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set
vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the
wilderness,

Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,

Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the
people,

Laughing!

Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to
be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

Published 1916

APHRA BEHN’S “LOVE ARMED”

Love in fantastic triumph sat,
Whilst bleeding hearts around him flowed,
For whom fresh pains he did create,
And strange tyrannic power he showed,
From thy bright eyes he took his fire,
Which round about, in sport he hurled;
But 'twas from mine, he took desire,
Enough to undo the amorous world.

From me he took his sighs and tears,
From thee his pride and cruelty;
From me his languishments and fears,
And every killing dart from thee;
Thus thou and I, the god have armed,
And set him up a deity;
But my poor heart alone is harmed,
Whilst thine the victor is, and free.

1684 version