have you memorised poems, books etc, and if so why?

[fajfall]

I'm memorising poems because I can appreciate them better this way, plus it's rewarding to feel that sense of accomplishment.

- When I'm with children and the wind gusts, I recite Mary Rosetti's short poem Who Has Seen The Wind? I hope it helps them view the world with more wonder and love of language.
- I memorised Mary Gilmore's Old Botany Bay as it's also short, and appears in the opening of Bob Katter's Australian history book to appreciate the hardship of past Australians who made Australia the eastern, prosperous country it is today.
- I'm giving myself a year to memorise Rime of the Ancient Mariner because it's so hypnotic and easy to remember, though I don't know how 'great' the poem is considered among critics and experts of literature. I'm trying 5 stanzas a week.

I used to write copious dictionary definitions of words I wrote down each time I encountered one in a book, but I found it wasn't very effective for either remembering or using naturally in my own communication.

[Dreamwoven]

I agree. As a youngster, I memorised large tracts of Byron's The Prisoner of Chillon, that to this day I still remember. It begins "My hair is grey, but not with years..."

The explanation is partly the inspiration from a poem about a long period of imprisonment and the effect it has on prisoners, making them hunger for the sound of birdsong, or to watch the sun rise, and finally how the prisoner when released as an old man almost missed his imprisonment:

" It might be months, or years, or days—
I kept no count, I took no note—
I had no hope my eyes to raise,
And clear them of their dreary mote;
At last men came to set me free;
I ask'd not why, and reck'd not where;
It was at length the same to me,
Fetter'd or fetterless to be,
I learn'd to love despair.
And thus when they appear'd at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage—and all my own!
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home:
With spiders I had friendship made
And watch'd them in their sullen trade,
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,
And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill—yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learn'd to dwell;
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are:—even I
Regain'd my freedom with a sigh."

[Helga]

As a kid I memorized many poems but here on the ice most of our best loved poems have been turned into songs so they are easy to remember and I used to sing them to my son, and still do every now and then. I also know a few poems I use on different occasions, about weather as an example. As a teenager with OCD I used poems to measure the time it took me to get to one place or another, How many times I could recite a certain sonnet or a poem on the way.

[Dreamwoven]

Songs always come to mind as memorable, Bob Dylan was good at that. Like Mr Tambourine Man and Every Grain of Sand.

[Helga]

yes that is true, and Leonard Cohen writes beautiful poems and has turned many of them into songs.

Here on the ice there has been a tradition of taking old poetry and write songs to them. It is a way to get them to a wider audience and in part the reason why so many people here know many of our old poets.

[Eiseabhal]

I enjoyed re-reading that Byron. Food for many thoughts there. Thanks Dreamwoven.

[Dreamwoven]

I don't remember why I was so drawn to this Byron poem but it still draws me. I understand that Byron used to ride over the old bridge over the River Don outside Aberdeen, where I was living at the time.

[ennison]

People can learn to love their restraining bonds. Some folk call it making the best of a bad job.

[Dreamwoven]

Indeed.

[desiresjab]

I ended up memorizing quite a few Yeats poems, some Frost, a little Stevens and Shakespeare, a couple of Joyce poems, and many individual poems from various poets. It was not exactly an accident or on purpose. I tended to remember and repeat words if they struck me hard enough. Then I realized with a tiny bit of work I could complete and perfect the job of total memorization.

Pieces with a lot of structure were much easier for me to hold on to and retain. Some without rhyme and structure, or just a sprinkling, were honestly too good to resist. Sometimes not even the whole poem.

Across the seas
where I have lost a sceptre
I hear the neighing
of my dappled nouns,
soft participles
coming down steps
treading on leaves
trailing their rustling gowns

Nabakov

Do not cut, scissors, that face
alone in fading memory,
do not lose her listening wonder
in my everlasting haze

Nabakov

The words of a woman are written on the wind and engraved on rapid waters.

Lucretius

I memorized the periodic chart, too. Something like that takes more upkeep, I find personally, than the beautiful words of a great poet.

[Lokasenna]

Back in my teens and early twenties, I used to have an exceptional capacity for memorising words - so long as I found it beautiful and meaningful, I would remember it after a single reading. It was very handy for passing exams as well! Nowadays I have to make much more effort, but I can still rattle off plenty of poetry at will. My party piece is usually to start reciting Chaucer's Canterbury Tales from memory until people get bored (usually no more than 40 lines or so in). I'll often do a bit of Beowulf as well, as people are interested to hear the sound of Old English. Other than that, Donne, Coleridge, Poe, Yeats, Tennyson and Betjeman all loom large in my repetoire.

[George Gordon]

Fajfall, this is a great topic, and I think it's wonderful that you recite Rosetti's poem for children. As for memorizing the Ancient Mariner, I think it's a poem especially fit for recitation, as it's a tale told to another. Need we look further than Richard Burton's enrapturing recording of the poem for confirmation of its aural power?

Dreamwoven, the Prisoner of Chillon isn't one of the Byrons I've read, but your explanation of it and the story of your connection with it is very fascinating. I'm a fan of Byron and the late romantics generally.

Helga, I love the idea of reciting poems to measure the distance between one place and other. I sometimes sing Mozart's "Der Vogelfänger bin Ich ja" for similar purposes, usually to measure time.

Lokasenna, I am absolutely delighted to hear that you recite Beowulf in Old English (Ango-Saxon?). It is one of my favorite poems, and though I don't know Old English, it's a truly magical sound. Hwaet!

I've memorized Shakespeare roles (which contain plenty of poetry) for the purpose of performing them in plays, being a theatre person, but I tend to forget all but the most striking lines once the run of a play is finished. Though I haven't played Hamlet (and probably never will), I do recite to myself on occasion the "How all occasions do inform against me" speech because the ending line, "my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth" captures Hamlet's character so well. The earliest Shakespeare I ever memorized was the obscure Player's recitation "The rugged Pyrrus, he whose sable arms... " just because the purposefully archaic vocabulary is such fun.

I've also memorized the first page of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake because it is so fun in its quasi-nonsense sounding way. An interesting thing about the poetic prose of Finnegan is that it's written in a kind of Irish lilt that sounds like smooth-flowing water when you hear someone else say it (especially Joyce, who recorded excerpts of it), but when you try to say it yourself for the first time it's incredibly dense and trips up the toungue like nothing else. It's an artificial lilt that has to be learned by repetition, but once you've said it a couple times it rolls off the tongue as if it were meant to be there. Just try another passage though, and you'll be back to square one! It's like Michelangelo's Pietà, that looks so natural but upon further inspection is constructed along irregular proportions.

I suppose the main reason I have for memorizing poetry is simply to get to know it better. You have to live inside it for a while, saying it over and over to yourself from memory before the real secrets of the poem come out. I've been studying French for a while now, and memorizing poems in French helps my vocabulary and feel for the language. I've memorized two poems by Baudelaire, one by Mallarmé, and a passage from Racine's Phèdre. I set myself the task of translating the Racine, but before I began the translation I had to memorize the passage and play through its every angle, nook, and contour before I could begin to appreciate what Racine had done with the language and attempt to render those effects in English. There are many who say Racine is untranslatable precisely because of all the metrical, coloristic, sonorous things he does with the language - I doubt that I achieved anything better than those who have tried before, but at the very least I can say that appreciation is very much increased by memorization. I have almost swooned with delight at something in that same passage that I only noticed on the fifteenth recitation.

Poems are the most compact of literature, and reward repeated interaction with them more than any other genre.

[Dreamwoven]

I lived in Aberdeen for 5 years in the 1960s, loved it and still have several books on the city and the Northeast.

[George Gordon]

Aberdeen seems like a city with a rich history - apparently Byron's time there had a deep impact on some of his later themes and developments. I'd like to visit it some day. Your five years there must have been great!

Steve, I enjoyed your reply very much, especially your style of reading and the warning about people who read the same book their entire lives. I've never gotten much out of speed-reading either.

I've also found that though I enjoy memorizing texts, the best audience for it is usually myself - anyone else is quickly bored. Wait, scratch that, I do have one audience who doesn't mind recitations: my dog, when we go for walks.

[Adonais]

I've memorised great gobs of Romantic verse and bits and pieces from other poets I like: it simply enriches your daily life by bringing poetry into it. In the shower this morning I was repeating to myself a sonnet by Keats. It's just nice to have that bit of aesthetic pleasure on hand if needed.

(helps with the ladies also)

[El Entenado]

I apologize for resurrecting this thread.

There's a poem that I wished to recite here. I used to read this poem every time something happened, at the end I just had it memorized.

Yo me subí a un pino verde
por ver si la divisaba
Soló divisé el polvo
del coche que la llevaba

Anda jaleo, jaleo
Ya se acabo el alboroto
Y ahora empieza el tiroteo

No salgas, paloma, al campo
Mira que soy cazador
Si te tiro y te mato
Para mí será un dolor
Para mí será un quebranto

Anda jaleo, jaleo
Ya se acabo el alboroto
Y ahora empieza el tiroteo

En la calle de los muros
mataron a una paloma
Yo cortaré con mis manos
las flores de su corona

Anda jaleo, jaleo
Ya se acabo el alboroto
Y ahora empieza el tiroteo

BTW, Spanish is not my native language, so please forgive any mistakes you find.

[Dreamwoven]

yes that is true, and Leonard Cohen writes beautiful poems and has turned many of them into songs.

Here on the ice there has been a tradition of taking old poetry and write songs to them. It is a way to get them to a wider audience and in part the reason why so many people here know many of our old poets.

A Leonard Cohen song I remember well is the one that starts "I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm..."

[milagros]

(helps with the ladies also)

Hello:

I like to memorize poems; no important if they are big and short. Generally, I like to listen to them, the words come alive when someone recites them. Well, I haven't got a wonderful voice is why I don't recite for other persons, I only recite poems for myself

Adonais, you are correct, many women love the poems a lot.

[togre]

I've working on memorizing poems I knew or half knew when I was a kid. I've polished off The Cremation of Sam MaGee and Casey at the Bat and will be working on The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere and The Children's Hour next. I love the cadence and the story they tell. I also like to show off to family and friends. If I can share a neat story beautifully told to children, that's worth it too.

[spikepipsqueak]

I have very few pieces I could quote end to end, but a lot of Banjo Paterson and C. J. Dennis stays with me because of my father's love for them and my own early exposure. Simple rhythms and positive associations make them memorable and easy to retain.

I memorised Elisabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 43 (How do I love thee?) when I was a teenager, because, well, I was a teenager. :)

I was so deeply moved by this

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop

that much of it stayed with me for weeks after my initial reading without any effort on my part.

Some Frost, a few of Shakespeare's sonnets. But memory is a funny thing, I can't retain anything just because I think I should. It has to speak to me, and then I can't get rid of it.

[ennison]

Good on you. It is healthy and useful to memorise. Ignore the bs who whine about rote learning. Learning by rote is mind expanding. It opens out areas of the brain that would otherwise remain fallow.

[Dreamwoven]

I can't really explain this but Bob Dylan "Mr Tambourine Man" is a song I sang to myself quite often, especially when out walking alone.

[Pianogal]

I love the Ancient Mariner. I really should start memorising poetry too.

[Dreamwoven]

Poetry put to music is particularly easy to memorise. The best poetry put to music doesn't need to be memorised as a mechanical thing, nor is it learning by rote. Another song I remember the words of is Nat King Cole singing "Autumn Leaves".