High school and middle school students, teachers, administrators, parents and Cornell MFA poets celebrated the written and spoken word at an open-air reading and poetry slam, April 28 at Ithaca High School (IHS).

Nearly 70 people attended the event, held in the school's courtyard. Six MFA student writers in Alice Fulton's poetry seminar opened the reading.

Ben Garcia read "The Memory Jar" -- in which a boy pours a jar full of beetles into his older sister's hair -- calling it his fictionalized account of an incident in his family. Clayton Pityk related an encounter with a black bear in "The Wee Hours Marathon." Alex Chertoff deconstructed an image of a matador and bullfighter in "News," "written in response to an actual photograph I saw in a local newspaper."

Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers read "Echo," with images evoking a series of echoes in different forms, including a verse celebrating guitarist Antigoni Goni. Sally Wen Mao brought scenarios of danger and risk to "How I Survived the Stampede."

And in "To Pecola Breedlove, with the best intentions," Kimberley Williams carved a moment out of a trip to the corner store with lists -- of cars, sensory details, food items -- in a poem addressed to the protagonist of "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison, MFA '55.

The poems the MFA students featured are included in this year's "Poem in Your Pocket" chapbook, produced at Cornell for the annual Poem in Your Pocket Day, April 14 in New York City, and for distribution on campus and at IHS. The book also is online and available for mobile devices at http://poetryinyourpocket.cornell.edu.

After the MFA readings, art teacher and IHS Poetry Club adviser Judy Cogan, the slam's emcee, called on poets who had signed up for an open mic, which featured performances by six IHS students and alumni and school librarian Nan Bell.

Bell said she ran the poetry slams out of the school library for about 10 years. In recent years, as many as 25 poets have participated.

Eight poets of all ages -- including Ithaca City School District assistant superintendent Leslie Myers -- participated in the IHS Poetry Slam that closed the courtyard event, with the Cornell poets among the judges.

"I'd say it was a success," Chertoff said. "I look around, and I see people of all ages, and the weather helped. The best part is they get to take [the chapbook] home with them."

IHS hosts two poetry events a year, Cogan said -- usually an open mic in the fall and a competitive poetry slam in the spring.

"It's heartening for me to see ... a lot of the kids took [the slam] seriously," Chertoff said. "It's not only a serious craft, it's also a source of play, and we saw it was a way to tap into what they were feeling."