Memorizing Poetry

[JBI]

How many of you guys memorize poetry? I know I do, it is one of my pleasures in life to be able to dig up a nice couplet, or a short lyric at will, when situation presents itself. Quoting in conversation, especially poetry is one of the most gratifying experiences gained from reading. In addition to that though, there is more, there is the ability to recite verses to yourself when you are alone, when you are contemplating, when you are sitting on the bus, going through a hard time, a happy moment, a cherished moment, or a dreaded moment. The ability to chant Ulysses (Tennyson) to oneself in times when one feels most caged, or is about to act drastically is exhilertating. From the fantastic opening,

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

To the unrelenting, exquisite Miltonic conclusion of sheer perfection that even T.S. Eliot couldn't deny as a work of genius,

Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Surely the experience, for all lovers of verse, is essential to the experience.

But, on another note, what are your opinions on memorizing? What are your tricks to memorizing, your favorite poems that you have memorized, or ones that you found easiest/most rewarding to commit to memory.

I'll list a few of my own,

Ulysses - Tennyson
The Sick Rose - Blake
A Poison Tree - Blake
The Tyger - Blake
The Lamb - Blake
A Slumber Did My Spirit Steal - Wordsworth
Sonnet 130 - Shakespeare
The Eagle: a fragment - Tennyson
About half of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock so far - Eliot
Legend - Hart Crane (I've tried others of his work, but the rhetoric seems to dense for my memory)
To Autumn - Keats
Ozymandias - Shelley
Carry her Over The River - Auden
several short poems by W.C. Williams (his are the easiest to remember by far)
amongst others.

What are some of your favorites?

[Virgil]

I used to do it all the time. Keats, Tennyson, Blake, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Shakespeare, Wordsworth. Frankly I learned to write by copying and memorizing. Those that say memorizing facts and writing and math and science doesn't lead to learning are just plain wrong.

[sofia82]

It's better say nothign about memorizing poetry :bawling: I don't know why I only remember the frist lines and I dont know to balme myself or my brain and memory.

[mayneverhave]

My memorization of poetry tends to be purely intuitive, unforced and emotional, as opposed to academic.

The greatest benefit of memorization, for me, has been when lines of verse drift randomly to my lips in every day life, at seemingly random moments.

For example, I'll be drunk at a party when suddenly some lines from Yeats's Who Goes With Fergus? come to mind. It's these seemingly random moments that make the memorization of poetry worthwhile.

My literature professor once said, we read and memorize literature for those rare moments in life in which we have no words to explain our emotions. Here they are writ down by someone we have never met.

[dramasnot6]

I usually only take the effort and time to memorize the ENTIRE poem for the purposes of school. However, I do have several Shakespeare soliloquies learned by heart.
I do have a multitude of segments of poems memorized,too, from various authors.

[chasestalling]

If could manage to memorize Hamlet, I would feel as if literature would no longer be a frontier.

As to poems per se, the one I'd make sure I'd never forget is Vladislav Hodasevich's "Orpheus", a poem about artistic inspiration in eleven quatrains of which I'm most partial to

High above my own spirit I tower
High above mortal matter I grow
Subterranean flames lick my ankles
Past my brow the cool galaxies flow

[Trekker114]

I have many of my favorite poems committed to memory. I never make it my goal to memorize a poem, but I tend to read poems I like so many times that I eventually just know them by heart. :)

[Equality72521]

I don't usually memorize poetry, but it's starting to become useful that I do, so I recently have just started with Shakespeare and a Milton Poem. (I do, however, find that quote are just as good to have memorized as poems and I actually have a wall full of index cards with quotes on them :) my guilty pleasure) But generally for me to memorize things, as I have for the past few years, I run it over in my head a couple of times, say it out loud, then write it down a few more times. Generally, it's not out of need to memorize them, but if I like a poem or a song a lot I tend to have it tumbling in my head.

[_Shannon_]

I don't, but my kids do. They are regular little walking RL Stevenson canons :D Now working through Longfellow. Eventually to Sheakespeare.

Interestingly they find memorizing prose harder-things like the Preamble to the Constitution and the Gettysburg Address.

I wish I had morepoetry memorized...but I think I'm too old to get it to stick now without making huge efforts--well too old and too sleep deprived. I have a hard time just remembering what appoinments we've got, what kid needs to be where, and what bills are due when...

[JBI]

It gets easier. Start with something like Emily Dickinson, and then work your way through the romantics, and then back to modernism. That's the only real way to get used to it. If you start with something like Eliot it will be incredibly difficult.

[Adopt]

The only one I've memorized is from a midsummer night's dream.

I can't recall exactly what it is but it begins:

"If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended..."

[Jozanny]

How many of you guys memorize poetry? I know I do, it is one of my pleasures in life to be able to dig up a nice couplet, or a short lyric at will, when situation presents itself. Quoting in conversation, especially poetry is one of the most gratifying experiences gained from reading. In addition to that though, there is more, there is the ability to recite verses to yourself when you are alone, when you are contemplating, when you are sitting on the bus, going through a hard time, a happy moment, a cherished moment, or a dreaded moment.

If it works for you JBI, then it works:) and although I am not attempting to criticize when I write this, I don't memorize, although I was on occasion forced to as a student. I think there are a few reasons why I don't.

1. I started out as a creative writer pretty much solely publishing free verse, and to keep my mind fluid, I do not want to imitate anyone, though if I want to torture allusions I will do as much research as I need.

2. I'm not a formalist, and doubt I ever will be.

3. If a particular poem has a gratifying impact, I print it up, or keep it in the hard drive, tape it on the door, read it now and then, and I prefer making comparisons, like common themes between Vassar Miller and myself even though she was never explicit about cerebral palsy, whereas I am downright militant.

Although, I am more familiar with my stronger works, like this favorite of mine from 7 years ago:
http://www.sundress.net/wickedalice/ChessWthPreston.html

which this blessed editor still has in the archives, dear girl!

What I miss, which perhaps memory exercises assist to maintain, is the exuberant aspiration I used to feel-- part of that is dead to me now, which is why I read less poetry and concentrate on freelance pitching to still earn a few dollars.

But being a practitioner makes me reluctant to read too much of what others do with the genre. I keep my distance and prefer fiction and non-fiction for critique and study, like the odd fish I am.

But maybe I've let me guard down and took a dive here in LNF to renew my own hopeful audacity.

Never cared for Tennyson. Donne is worth learning by heart, Plath, and Vassar Miller, for a great regionalist. She did not wear her broken body on her sleeve. Listen to what she does with silence here:


Vassar Miller

Love Song for the Future

To our ruined vineyards come,
Little foxes, for your share
Of our blighted grapes, the tomb
Readied for our common lair
Ants, we open you the cupboard;
Flee no more the heavy hand
Harmless as a vacant scabbard
Since our homes like yours are sand.

Catamounts so often hunted,
Wend your ways through town or city,
Since both you and we are haunted
By the Weird Ones with no pity.
Deer and bear we used to stalk,
We would spend our dying pains
Nestling you with mouse and hawk
Near our warmth until it wanes.

[kasie]

[QUOTE=mayneverhave;585007]My memorization of poetry tends to be purely intuitive, unforced and emotional, as opposed to academic.

The greatest benefit of memorization, for me, has been when lines of verse drift randomly to my lips in every day life, at seemingly random moments.

Much the same for me, NMH, I read and re-read poems that catch my mind and find I have internalised them, rather than setting out to learn them.


My literature professor once said, we read and memorize literature for those rare moments in life in which we have no words to explain our emotions. Here they are writ down by someone we have never met.[/
QUOTE]

Could he have had in mind the definition of poetry by (I think) Pope:

'....What oft was thought
But ne'er so well expressed...'

JBI - your list of internalised poems is nearly the same as mine! :)

[_Shannon_]

It gets easier. Start with something like Emily Dickinson, and then work your way through the romantics, and then back to modernism. That's the only real way to get used to it. If you start with something like Eliot it will be incredibly difficult.
LOL! Or The Rain by Robert Louis Stevenson:
The rain is raining
all around
It falls on field and tree
It falls on my umbrella here
and on the ships at sea.

I think that's the only one I have memorized, but that's from hearing it so many times from my kiddos.

Oh! I think I also know Pond's In a Station of the Metro, too--but that hardly counts as it's only two lines.

Maybe I should just memorise along with my kids as they learn their poems. The way they do it is to work on it no more than 5 minutes a day-two lines or 5 lines at a time. That way it'd be a natural progression from simple to more difficult and gives the baby a chance to start sleeping and my brain to ease out of survival mode...

[Trystan]

This is the only poem that I've memorized (it was unintentionally memorized; I've never really tried to memorize anything) and it's one of my favorites:

Sensation - Arthur Rimbaud

On blue summer evenings I'll take to the paths
Prickled by the corn I'll tread the young grass
I'll dream of its coolness under my feet
My bare head will bask in the wind

I shan't speak, I shan't even think
But a love without limits will fill up my soul
I'll go far, very far, a vagrant in the countryside
- Happy, like a man with a woman

I might memorize a few more . . . it's nice having one of your favorite poems lodged in your head. :)

[Shya]

Whenever I read a poem I really like, I read it over and over again to enjoy it, and before I know it it's memorized. I don't even try to memorize it, and it's there. I love how this happens though, because now I've got all these poems and quotes and things in my head and whenever I get bored I can pull when out and think about it.