This is Tongass Voices, a series from KTOO sharing perspectives from the homelands of the Áak’w Kwáan and beyond.
Cassie Lumba is a senior at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé and earlier this month, she won Alaskaʼs Poetry Out Loud competition.
She says performing her favorite poems has taught her what it means to open up, and how powerful words can be.
Lumba will travel to Washington D.C. next month to compete nationally. She says sheʼs excited to hear some good poetry.
Listen:
The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Cassie Lumba: Honestly, in my mind, I don’t have any huge feelings about winning. I am not extremely competitive. I’m not in it to win it, per se. I’m in it to feel it, I think is what I’d say.
I’m Cassie Lumba. I’m a senior in high school over at Juneau-Douglas: Yadaa.at Kalé, and I am the Alaska State Champion for Poetry Out Loud.
I’ve always loved reading poetry and sometimes writing it, but when I was a freshman over at Thunder Mountain, they had this program Poetry Out Loud, and so all the English classes had to choose a poem, like every student, had to choose a poem that was at least 15 lines, and if you wanted to, you could present that in front of the school in a school competition.
So that’s initially where I really started reciting poetry. I thought it was very interesting. And of course, I was nervous because I hadn’t really had much public speaking experience. So I was very scared, but after having practiced it in front of the class, I realized that it wasn’t that bad, that there was this sort of thrill that came with sharing that piece of myself in front of everyone.
For me, poetry is a way to express yourself without feeling this pressure to conform to a certain type of writing, without feeling like you have to have a certain amount of paragraphs or the certain structure. Poetry in itself, doesn’t need structure to be poetry.
So seeing something that was so universal while also being something personal to everybody reading it was very eye opening.
My favorite poem is actually the one that I did for my third round, which is, O Me! O Life! by Walt Whitman.
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
Of all the things even happening right now, things are so daunting and seemingly dreary, and there are points in life where you question it, you know? You question, “why we are doing what we are doing?” Why, despite everything going on around us, we continue with our lives, how tiring it is. And then the end of that poem says “Answer. That you are here — that life exists and identity.”
So that really is just the answer: We are here. We are ourselves, and we get to share a piece of ourselves in this small life. So maybe that really is just the meaning.
And I think that’s connected to me so much, because there have been many points in my life where I’ve gone through such hardship and I didn’t know whether or not I could continue in the sense of repetitiveness or like the mundane and tedious tasks of life without feeling such sadness, because there’s so much weight in doing those things, you know?
But then hearing him say, for there really is just one answer — that we are here, and this is all we can do, but to make the best of that.
