Memorising poetry.

that happens with me whaen I hear a song ... not poetry ... but yes, I do...
I think I've not got a strong memory .. that's all

When I memorize poetry, it's often from the combination of a poem I'm fond of and lack of a better thing to do. I did have to memorize a poem for forensics (Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot), and found that memorizing/performing poetry makes me understand the piece much more than I would otherwise. Maybe it's because poetry just isn't my thing, but I have to read poems several times over in order to get a complete meaning out of them.

i don't ever recall an entire poem unless i go out of my way to memorize it deliberately. i may recall a memorable phrase, but even a sentence is beyond my recall unless i deliberately make an effort to know it backward and forward and inside and out.

I love *having* memorized a favorite poem -(not so easy to actually do it).

But it means you have a nugget of beauty with you always ... (you don't need to worry about a book.) Examples: Auden, "Lullaby" ...Lay your sleeping head, my love/Human on my faithless arm ...

or

Donne - "Death Be not Proud"
Eliot - phrases - mostly from "The Wasteland"
Tennyson, "The Lady of Shalott"
Yeats

and lots of others.

It enriches your reading experience as well - because you catch allusions to poetry you know in other writers' works - eg., Baudelaire in Grahame Greene's The Quiet American - a novel i've just finished.

But I'm a poetry fiend anyway ... so it's a pleasure in many ways.

I remember when I was at school, we memorised Jabberwocky by Carroll. I can still remember it now...twas brillig and the slithy toves...oh the good old days!

I memorized The Hollow Men this week for my English class. I had read it enough times before trying to memorize it that the words were all in my head; I just had to put them in the right order. I didn't have any trouble reciting until I got to "Between the desire / and the spasm." Those lines always mess me up for some reason.

Of course, the best part was watching my class sit there wondering what on earth I was going on about. :blush:

I do not know a single poem by heart because my brain is weak.

Oh wait, 'Watermelon'. Charles Simic. And I'm not even sure those words are right. By no means my favourite Simic poem.


"Green Buddhas on the fruit stand.

We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth"

It's always a good way to intimate depth when we're feeling insecure.

One of my good friends today, I would have never gotten to know, had he not sat up from a doze, at a party, held up one finger, with his eyes still shut, and recited a passage from The Raven. Suddenly, everyone in the room stopped talking, looked at my friend until he stopped spouting, and then took one step away before resuming their previous conversations.

After which, this strange guy who was to be my friend, summarily passed out. But I knew from that moment on, I wanted to get to know this guy better.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Anastasija

Since my childhood - more spontaneously than in planned, organised manner - I have memorised quite a few poems; I always inclined to verse, preferred verse to prose [both when it comes to reading and writing], and I wanted to carry with, and in myself, the beauty of words.

Most of the poems I have memorised spontaneously, reading a lot of times the same poem - poetry was [is?] my opium; not a lot of them I memorised with an intention to memorise them, they simply started to form part of me little by little.

I have been wondering, does anyone here memorise poems - whether intentionally or not - and what are your experiences with it? When do you remember memorised poems - do they, out of darkness, just "come" to you in certain moments, thus reminding you that you know them; or they need to be called for to come back to you? Which are your favourite poems that you know by heart?

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Poetry is something we that is learned effortlessly and particularly if they are rhymed. If we really engrossingly read a poem and we do it repeatedly as poems we memorize them automatcally