The performance of a poem allows it to transcend a reader's completely subjective interpretation of it. Once on stage, a poem is given context, rhythm, and inflection. Much less is left to the reader's analysis of the poem, and more is given to the performer's personification. While reading poetry I have often stumbled upon poems that I just knew would be amazing when performed. There's some element of the piece, whether it be due to the structure of the poem, the rhyme scheme, or simply the poignancy of the content, that makes it seem so performable. As I had expected, many of the poems that we read this week had such an effect.

The poem "Rock Me, Goong Hay!" was definitely one of them. As I read through the poem, I couldn't help myself from falling into its rhythm and by the end of the second or third stanza I even had a little head-bob action happening. The wonderfully placed and witty rhymes build up a momentum in the poem that builds up to the final lines "'CAUSE IT TAKES A NATION OF BILLIONS TO HOLD US PEOPLE BACK!/ Rock me, Goong Hay/ Goong hay fat choy!". Everything about this piece made it seem like a performance even before I had seen the actual page to stage transformation. The free-for-all rhythm and rhyme feeling is undeniable; just reading the piece makes me feel like I am witnessing some organic, unaltered poetic purging. With awesomely creative lines such as

"Yellow fever was our lot in this country/Now we're the so-called "model minority"/Which don't really mean shit if you think about it/'Cause plenty still despise our slanty eyes",

I couldn't wait to see the piece performed. The performance of this poem was fairly different than what I had expected. Rather than a simple, more rhythmic reading of the poem Alvin Eng had an entire song formulated from this piece. The instrumentation was a bit jazzier than I had expected, but Eng's vocal's brought in the "roots-rock-rapper" effect that the poem has.