Get Lit Rising: Words Ignite. Claim Your Poem. Claim Your Life. - Softcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Diane Luby Lane is the founder and executive director of Get Lit–Words Ignite, a Los Angeles-based arts education nonprofit that is transforming the landscape of teen literacy by empowering new generations in literature, self-expression, and performing arts. She is also the founder of the Get Lit Players, an award-winning classic teen poetry troupe that has collaborated with the United Nations, Dove, and Women in the World, and toured at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and the White House, and more, igniting communities across the globe with art and social consciousness. Lane is also the founding producer of Get Lit's Classic Slam, the largest youth classic poetry festival in the world. Lane’s Lit Kit, a standards based, in-school curriculum, has been adopted by schools throughout the U.S. and internationally. She is the author of Words of Women (Samuel French) as well as the playwright and star of the critically acclaimed one-woman show Deep Sea Diving (also known as Born Feet First) which toured with iconic Chicano poet and author Jimmy Santiago Baca. Lane is a graduate of the Annenberg Foundation’s Alchemy + Leadership Program, a TedX speaker, a Southern California Leadership Network Fellow, a member of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Poet Laureate Committee, and a recipient of the Presidential Lifetime Service Award. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.

The Get Lit Players are an award-winning classic teen poetry troupe selected from students in the Get Lit program. They perform annually for over 25,000 of their peers, igniting a passion for literacy and social consciousness in schools and communities across the globe. The GLPs have collaborated and performed with the United Nations, the White House, the Kennedy Center, and more. Join the Literary Riot at getlit.org.

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Get Lit Rising

1. LOSER

MAIA MAYOR, 17



Maia’s Story

Sometimes I think about my past failures and I get sad, no matter how inconsequential they seem to be. That time I forgot the lines to a poem onstage and had to read it from my cell phone. That time when no one clapped. Those other times when no one clapped. That time I poured my heart out and then noticed a student sleeping at her desk. That time I made a collect call out of curiosity and had to pay my friend’s mother fifty cents. That time I failed Spanish. That time I failed Korean. That time I failed French. That time I failed ASL.

It is a deep hurt, igniting several other pangs of regret and remorse and embarrassment that come rushing up all at once. And it scares me to know that I am capable of feeling so much all at once. My heart drops into the pit of my stomach when I remember the time I called my mother “ugly.” Fifteen years later and I still want to cry. My heart beats faster and my chest feels like it’s going to implode. My throat closes up. Every part of my body hurts. I think about the time she got me a present I didn’t like and how I left it in the backseat of her car despite her constant reminders. I find it hard to breathe. I can feel it up in my throat and squirming in my bottom jaw. My stomach hurts. I am dizzy. But I wrap my arms around my chest and suppress anything trying to jump out.

When my grandma talks about wanting to die, when she confronts me with the brutal reality of the inevitable, I don’t react. I am unaffected. I am buttering my toast. I am detached because it’s the only way to keep my spine straight and my feet on the floor. I will not want to go to her funeral. I will not want to visit her grave. I will want to stay as far away as possible. Nothing in this world scares me more than the fragility of human life.

I expel pain at insignificant moments. To the dog shelter commercial, you may have my tears. You may have my quivering lip and wobbling shoulders. You may have my broken heart, my sobbing, my short gasps of breath. Because I do not want to cry in my grandma’s absence. Because I am afraid of what will pour out of me. I am afraid of running out of tears and out of breath and out of feeling. I am afraid of being empty. I don’t think my body will be able to handle it. I don’t know how I’ll find the strength to open my eyes and rise to my feet every morning.

I imagine this to be a concentrated version of my entire life. First I feel lost. And then I feel angry and upset with myself and with the world. And every bad thought and feeling that has ever passed through me comes crashing down all at once. And it progressively gets harder to breathe. I have a climactic existential crisis before eventually giving up. I briefly feel relieved. And then nothing at all. And I settle into a comfortable numbness.

At my best, I am dramatic, self-serving, and ruthless. At my worst, I am vacant and underwhelming. The spectrum of my personality is built like a looping roller coaster where everyone, including myself, tends to feel a little nauseated. I am crippled by anxiety and depression; I have been all my life. And I have learned to suffer quietly, letting opportunities pass me by on every occasion because I don’t feel capable. This is how I live my life  .  .  .  with everything just out of arm’s reach. This is why I’ve been kicked out of school seven times. This is why I still can’t drive. This is why my group of friends could be counted on an amputated hand. This is why my answer will always be no. I am perpetually on the cusp of greatness. But emotional instability and a deep-rooted fear of failure keep me tiptoeing through life like every task is an intricate puzzle made of broken glass. To be perfectly honest, I am the most terrified person you will ever meet. I am afraid of vulnerability, of inadequacy, of embarrassment, of imperfection, of death. Of life, for that matter. But I’m figuring it out one step at a time.

My first attempt at facing my fears started at the hands of my mother, whose love of language inspired me to express myself in ways I’d never imagined. My mother is Japanese, and when I was little, she used to teach me words and phrases, but one I still think of often is kintsukuroi, meaning “to repair with gold.” It’s the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken. That is essentially what the Leonard Cohen poem (in the form of song lyrics) from “Anthem” means to me.

My response poem, “Perfect,” came from a dark place. From desperation and uncontrollable rage. And while I may never bloom into a self-assured optimist, the experience of connecting to Cohen’s words, responding with my own, and performing them live was transformative to say the least. (And far more cathartic than the empty promises of Prozac.) I spent years striving for unattainable ideas of perfection, but I view this poem as a profoundly important reminder that perfection is beside the point. We are all inherently flawed. There will always be a crack in everything. But that is where you find the light. That is where the raw honesty and the beauty of vulnerability lie.



Classic Poem

From “Anthem” by Leonard Cohen

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.

Response Poem

Perfect

Maia Mayor

Is there something wrong with you,

a loose screw or two that ruined your ability to function?

Why are you always so tired?

Your life is uninspired and small; all you do is sprawl on the couch

with outstretched limbs like a sloth in slow motion.

Where is your devotion to succeed, Maia?

Did it drift out your window with the smoke from your weed?

Do I need to force-feed you discipline ’til you finally concede?

I cook and I clean and I don’t stop ’til the soles of my feet bleed.

But I’m fine.

I’m perfect.

Be perfect, Maia.

Be perfect like me.

Stop wearing those god-awful ripped pants

and that lipstick like a whore with Double-D implants.

You only get one chance.

Stop acting like a cat with nine lives left.

Stop committing yourself to songs and stories and spoken slam bullshit

in a world where degrees and PhDs impede the need for poetry.

And stop chewing on your nails.

No wonder you’ve never attracted any males.

Why do you do that? Do you like the taste? Are they sweet?

You can’t eat sweets, Maia.

You’re ruining your teeth like you’re ruining your life.

My teeth are perfect. Clean and pristine.

They gleam like the golden halo above my perfectly conditioned head.

I don’t need sugar, Maia.

I am above sugar.

Why are you down here, Maia?

Why are you down here when you need to be up here?

Up here with the ones who have a promising career

who listen when information goes in one ear

and doesn’t come out the other.

You’ll never be up here, Maia.

You act as if the act of listening is a crime

or you would have heard me the six hundred and sixty-sixth time

I told you to STOP CHEWING ON YOUR...