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CASEY CAVIN: OK. I'm going to do "O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman, and my name is Casey. "O Captain, my captain. Our fearful trip is done. The ship has weathered every rack. The prize we sought is won."

CHRIS ROBERTS: 16-year-old Casey Cavin of Champlin Park is spending his Saturday morning at the Minnesota State Arts Board office.

CASEY CAVIN: "But O heart, heart, heart. O, the bleeding drops of red, where on the deck my captain lies, fallen, cold, and dead."

CHRIS ROBERTS: Cavin is meeting with some coaches-- poetry coaches.

JOHN MINCZESKI: What you might do is think about projecting just a little more, especially toward the end.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Maplewood poet John Minczeski and Eagan spoken-word artist Ibé Kaba are helping Cavin get ready for Poetry Out Loud, a poetry recitation competition sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. While Minczeski advises Cavin to be aware of the size of the room he's in, Ibé Kaba praises his vocal delivery.

IBÉ KABA: I like the variation in your tone, but you can stand to be a little more animated.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Kaba and Minczeski are also conducting in-class workshops in conjunction with Poetry Out Loud, which is in its first year. Only six Minnesota high schools are participating, mainly because the NEA offered it too late last year for many to get involved. The program's driving notion is that poetry comes alive when it's read aloud.

The students choose poems from a website containing more than 500 of the best-known poems in English literature. They then memorize and later recite them in front of a panel. They're judged on everything from interpretation, pace, and diction to how they stand and the number of words they forget. Each school picks one winner.

SPEAKER 1: OK, Bronwyn.

SPEAKER 2: Yay, Bronwyn.

CHRIS ROBERTS: The Agricultural Food Science Academy in Vadnais Heights held its school-wide competition last Friday. English teacher Stephanie Arnold presided over the event. Arnold says at first, the students hesitated to commit what they viewed as highbrow, musty old poems to memory. But she says as they got involved, their outlook changed.

STEPHANIE ARNOLD: There is a special alchemy that takes place when you memorize a poem, because it becomes your own. And after some time, the kids really start to speak in that voice.

SPEAKER 3: This is "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" by Julia Ward Howe. "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes--"

SUZANNE KELLER: Hi, I'm Suzanne Keller. I'm doing "Siren Song" by Margaret Atwood. "This is the song that everyone would like to learn, the song that is irresistible, the song that forces men to leap over--"

SPEAKER 4: My poem that I'm doing today is "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, Where, and Why" by Edna St. Vincent Millay. "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten what arms have lain under my head until morning. But the rain is full of ghosts."

CHRIS ROBERTS: Millay, Longfellow, Whitman. It was as if the students had memorized vast sections of the Norton Anthology of Poetry. Student Megan Skoglund says she was surprised at how personally connected she became to her poems.

MEGAN SKOGLUND: It's not even your poetry, it's someone else's. But you can take that and make it your own, and a lot of times that pleases people. They like that. So it's very personal.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Others began to realize why the poems on the Poetry Out Loud website are considered timeless. After reading several of them, Geoff Gerardin concluded that the human heart hasn't changed much over time, and the old poets gave him fresh insights.

GEOFF GERARDIN: When you read their writing sometimes they can connect stuff for you that you've never even thought of yourself, because it's just not presented in today's society. So it actually helped me a lot even personally, reading maybe so-called out-of-date writing.

CHRIS ROBERTS: The competition is very much up to date. But does competition square with the fundamental value of poetry? Minnesota State Arts Board communications director Sue Jens is coordinator of Poetry Out Loud in Minnesota. Jens believes there's no harm in making a game out of learning poetry if the students benefit.

SUE JENS: What we're learning through this is that many students really are interested in poetry, and this raises their interest to a level that maybe some other subjects already have.

CHRIS ROBERTS: The winners from all six participating high schools will meet April 20 at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul for the state finals. The winner there gets an all-expense trip to Washington for the national finals on May 16, where a total of $50,000 in scholarships and stipends will be up for grabs. I'm Chris Roberts, Minnesota Public Radio News.