Added: May 20, 2008
From: ccandd96
Duration: 2:16
Janet Kuypers reads this original poem "The State of the Nation" in a practice run of her feature show for the 2006 Society of Professional Journalism Expo's Chicago Poetry Showcase of "A Celebration of the First Amendment" on Saturday, August 26 2006. She performed this show at the Lake County Poets Society on August 22nd 2006. Although the materials were altered last minute after this Lake County Poets Society show (in this practice performance, for example, the poem "A Great American" is used, which was pulled from the show for another poem), we do also have video recordings from this practice session. For more information on the writing of Janet Kuypers, go to http://www.janetkuypers.com to read more of her work. Here is the original poem: the state of the nation my phone rang earlier today and I picked it up and said "hello" and a man on the other end said, Is this Janet Kuypers? and I said, "Yes, it is, may I ask who is calling?" and he said, Yeah, hi, this is George Washington, and I'm sitting here with Jefferson and we wanted to tell you a few things. And I said "Why me?" And he said Excuse me, I believe I said I was the one that wanted to do the talking. God, that's the problem with Americans nowadays. They're so damn rude. And I said, "You know, you really didn't have to use language like that," and he said, Oh, I'm sorry, it's just I've been dead so long, I lose all control of my manners. Well, anyway, we just wanted to tell you some stuff. Now, you know that we really didn't have much of an idea of what we were doing when we were starting up this country here, we didn't have much experience in creating bodies of power, so I could understand how our Constitution could be misconstrued and then he put in a dramatic pause and said, but when we said people had a right to bear arms we meant to protect themselves from a government gone wrong and not so you could kill and innocent person for twenty dollars cash and when we said freedom of religion we included the separation of church and state because freedom of religion could also mean freedom from religion and when we said freedom of speech we had no idea you'd be burning a flag or painting pictures of Christ doused in urine or photographing people with whips up their respective anatomies but hell, I guess we've got to grin and bear it because if we ban that the next thing they'll ban is books and we can't have that and I said, "But there are schools that have books banned, George." And he said Oh.
Channel: Entertainment
Tags: chicago county janet kuypers lake nation poem poetry poets practice religion show society state www.janetkuypers.com
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