Wonderful selection, tips and photo of your daughter. Do you know Dana Gioia's essay on studying poetry with Elizabeth Bishop? She believed passionately in committing poems to memory.
I actually have his book Studying with Miss Bishop... and it's signed! *squeeee* I am glad you know about this book. I think Bishop and many others of that time believed in memorizing poetry, but I think it was starting to fall out of favor. I was reading about it in the introduction to John Hollander's book Committed to Memory.
Zina, your thoughts echo so many of my own and I rejoice. As an educator, I will high five your observations and cheer for this post as well.... The first poem I memorized was Malcolm Guite's 'Singing Bowl' next was George Herber's rendering of Psalm 23.
Along those lines, I gathered a collection earlier this year of writable and memorizable poetry for my readers and called it 'Poet Scribe'--linking here if you're interested.
thank you again and yay for this wonderful, poetic echo! Memorizing poetry is good for the brain :-)
First of all, your daughter is adorable! I also thought I could no longer memorize until I was required to memorize scripture for my Bible classes in grad school, and I did it! I was successful by following one of your suggestions: I wrote the passage verse by verse every day until I mastered it. I will have to use the same approach with memorizing poetry because my feeble attempts to memorize Mary Oliver's "Praying" in recent days simply by rereading it has not paid off.
Question: Do you try to memorize the punctuation and line breaks or just the words?
Thank you re: my baby girl. This one had the most hair when born and was just as happy as could be. All my kids had their own strong personalities.
It’s great how you memorized those Bible verses. I’m trying to do some myself! So much of the Bible is poetry. ❤️
I like trying to honor the line break with taking a breath (long or short, depending on the punctuation where appropriate). It sometimes helps me remember by visualizing the words on the page. I treat most punctuation as musical tests on a score. Recitation is all about sound.
I started memorizing small poems when I was a child. I remember choosing to memorize an old children’s rhyme from a library book before returning it.
“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
Guard the bed that I lie on
Four corners to my bed
Four angels round my head
One to watch, one to pray,
And two to bear my soul away.”
I was drawn to the idea of keeping it and carrying it with me always. In middle school I started memorizing longer poems (I can still remember parts). I read a string of novels where someone was falsely imprisoned and I wanted to have beautiful words that no one could take away. Just in case someone threw me in jail without books or paper.
Now I enjoy doing recitation with my children. I don’t have them memorize everything, but I find that they know a lot simply by saying the same poems, nursery rhymes, and verses over and over across a term. I now have them commit one to heart at the end of the term to share with Dad.
Thanks, Zina for these tips. I have been trying to memorize a poem a day for April or at least part of a poem a day. I find that poems with meter and reptation are the easiest. I need to read the poem, write the poem out, and listen to it. Audio while I'm walking is key for me. I also outline the poem to remember keywords. I've done Mark Antony from Julius Caesar: Friends Romans Countrymen... Elisabeth Alexander's "When" and Diane Suess' a "Sonnet Like Poverty Teaches You What You Can Do Without.." Sonnets are a good length. "96 Vandam" by Gerald Stern is good one. Wallace Steven's "Snowman" and "Emperor of Ice Cream" will always stay with me. Louise Gluck's "Wild Iris" was very difficult for me, but the more I do the better I get.
Thank you, David. I love the speeches in Shakespeare’s plays, and the one by Mark Antony is one of my favorites. Sonnets are wonderful because there is also a set rhetorical pattern as well. Audio while walking does quite well, doesn’t it? I love all the poems you have mentioned, although I don’t know the Gerald Stern one. I shall look it up!
I really enjoy that podcast by The New Yorker. There are actually quite a few podcasts that do a good job of examining a poem and introducing new poems/poets to listeners.
Do you listen to any others? Just curious. I ask because I like your taste in poetry.
Thanks! I like Poetry for All with Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — they make poetry accessible — and The Ode & Psyche Podcast with Bianca Stone — she’s all about the poet life.
I do love that Mark Strand poem --- which I don't think is really free verse (vers libre, maybe). The first line is trimeter, the second is tetrameter, but the rest are pentameter. That movement seems to echo the growing of the light, which is lovely. The lines, and the poem as a whole, are held together by repetitions of word and sound: "coming" in line 2, the alliteration of "love" and "light," "bones" and "body," the repeated phrase, "Even this late" at the beginning and again in the penultimate line.
So there's really a lot going on mnemonically in that short poem, even if it's not metrically regular or rhymed (features that always help!).
Probably everybody who ever knew Mark Strand has anecdotes about him, but one thing I most remember is coming to some workshop with the first remotely successful sonnet I had ever written, and Mark saying to me, "Isn't that great, writing in form? It just writes itself." It was one of the least ironic things I ever heard him say. And he was right.
I agree with you, that there is more form that meets the eye regarding form. It’s a bit closer to mixed meter then? This is a lovely explication of the sonic power of this poem; thank you so much for writing it! What I really love are the images as well. And when I recite it my hands sweep out when I say “the warm bouquets of air.” There is a great deal of physicality in this poem. At least for me there is.
The metrical pattern seems really measured and deliberate to me, at least in terms of the number of stresses per line, but so understated that it doesn't announce itself. Thank you for reminding me of it! It is full of quiet marvels.
Love this! e e cummings's "i thank you god for most this amazing" is one of my favourites, and I still remember most of it years after memorising it and performing it. You've inspired me to try more! What a fun thing to do instead of being on our phones ;) "The Red Wheelbarrow" and "I'm nobody" brought back great memories of my university days - thank you.
And I think there is something about cummings that makes people think it can’t be performed because of the typography, but I think it is splendid you have “i thank you god for most this amazing” in your heart. Such a wonderful thing to have a common vernacular in poetry, to have affection for the same words and images!
I think "i thank you god" works beautifully as a spoken word piece too - and did you know there's a choir song arrangement of the lines "now the ears of my eyes awaken and now the eyes of my eyes are open." god, it still gives me shivers typing it)? Wow, that poem had me in tears - thanks for sharing. So powerful!
I also find that writing the poem down in longhand helps me to memorise it. I tend to 'photograph' the poem on the page in my mind.
And if it rhymes, the last word of a line helps to prompt the next.
And the theme itself matters; one stanza can lead logically to the next.
Some poems I have memorised this year: Ozymandias by Shelley; La Figlia Che Piange by TSE; Acquainted with the Night, Frost; Hymn to God the Father, Donne; The Habit of Perfection, GM Hopkins; When I have fears, Keats; The Way through the Woods, Kipling; An Irish Airman, Yeats; That Time of Year thou mayest in me behold, WS; Plead for Me, Emily Brontë; This World is not Conclusion, Dickinson.
What does it mean to say 'They become part of you'? I think it means they become embedded in the psyche, shaping in an definable way how one thinks, how one experiences and how one writes oneself...
Wow. I listened to it yesterday. I love when musicians find inspiration in poetry and create art to transmute the essence of the poem from the page to the audio. It’s like an act of translation.
When I was young I memorized Tennyson's Crossing the Bar, which is short and very easy to learn. W.B. Yeats' Lake Isle of Innisfree is a pretty easy one too.
I also do the copying out by hand and taping the poem to the kitchen cabinet. What I do is read a line out loud, then close my eyes and try to repeat it without looking. I keep doing that until I can say the line without making a mistake. Then I do that for the next one and say the first and second line together. It really helps to get the kids involved. They remember faster than I do and start correcting me.
I once saw a video of an actor talking about tips and tricks for memorizing her lines. She said she'd write down the first letter of every word in a line and then use them as a memory aid. First she'd look at the line, then she'd look at the page with just the list of letters and usually it wasn't too hard to remember each word as she looked at the initial letters. Eventually she'd get to where she could do it without the list of letters.
Hi, Melanie! The whole kids correcting the parents is how I think I got one child to memorize Mary Oliver poems. The kitchen is a great space for poetry because everyone goes there. I should add that Tennyson and Yeats to the list. That’s interesting with the actress’s tip on writing down the letters. I think that is particularly good for visual learners. Perhaps the act of writing the letters helps. With me it seems like I need a great deal of physicality to get my mind engaged. I was never a sit down type of person. However, I think I will try the letter-writing method just to see how it turns out. Thanks for the advice!
I used to put poems (and art for picture study) on the fridge, to make it impossible to miss. And on a whiteboard on the wall beside the kitchen table, because again, we'd all be there.
What a wonderful essay, Zina! A real treat for poetry lovers, even those with bad memories like me.
Thank you, Jeffrey!
I need to do this with Bible verses too!
Wonderful selection, tips and photo of your daughter. Do you know Dana Gioia's essay on studying poetry with Elizabeth Bishop? She believed passionately in committing poems to memory.
I actually have his book Studying with Miss Bishop... and it's signed! *squeeee* I am glad you know about this book. I think Bishop and many others of that time believed in memorizing poetry, but I think it was starting to fall out of favor. I was reading about it in the introduction to John Hollander's book Committed to Memory.
I found this REALLY helpful - loved the practical tips. And inspiring!!
I’m so glad! This comment is exactly why I wrote this! ❤️🙏
Zina, your thoughts echo so many of my own and I rejoice. As an educator, I will high five your observations and cheer for this post as well.... The first poem I memorized was Malcolm Guite's 'Singing Bowl' next was George Herber's rendering of Psalm 23.
Along those lines, I gathered a collection earlier this year of writable and memorizable poetry for my readers and called it 'Poet Scribe'--linking here if you're interested.
thank you again and yay for this wonderful, poetic echo! Memorizing poetry is good for the brain :-)
https://jodycollins.substack.com/p/poetscribe-3-poems-to-copy-for-all
First of all, your daughter is adorable! I also thought I could no longer memorize until I was required to memorize scripture for my Bible classes in grad school, and I did it! I was successful by following one of your suggestions: I wrote the passage verse by verse every day until I mastered it. I will have to use the same approach with memorizing poetry because my feeble attempts to memorize Mary Oliver's "Praying" in recent days simply by rereading it has not paid off.
Question: Do you try to memorize the punctuation and line breaks or just the words?
Thank you re: my baby girl. This one had the most hair when born and was just as happy as could be. All my kids had their own strong personalities.
It’s great how you memorized those Bible verses. I’m trying to do some myself! So much of the Bible is poetry. ❤️
I like trying to honor the line break with taking a breath (long or short, depending on the punctuation where appropriate). It sometimes helps me remember by visualizing the words on the page. I treat most punctuation as musical tests on a score. Recitation is all about sound.
I started memorizing small poems when I was a child. I remember choosing to memorize an old children’s rhyme from a library book before returning it.
“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
Guard the bed that I lie on
Four corners to my bed
Four angels round my head
One to watch, one to pray,
And two to bear my soul away.”
I was drawn to the idea of keeping it and carrying it with me always. In middle school I started memorizing longer poems (I can still remember parts). I read a string of novels where someone was falsely imprisoned and I wanted to have beautiful words that no one could take away. Just in case someone threw me in jail without books or paper.
Now I enjoy doing recitation with my children. I don’t have them memorize everything, but I find that they know a lot simply by saying the same poems, nursery rhymes, and verses over and over across a term. I now have them commit one to heart at the end of the term to share with Dad.
Oops-this is the correct poem. A poets lamentation on his dying cat.
When’er I felt my towering fancy fail
I stroked her ears, her head, her tail
And as I stroked improved her dying son from the sweet notes of her melodious tongue
Her purrs and mews so evenly kept time
She purred in meter and mewed in rhyme
That last line is *chef’s kiss* 💋
Stately kindly lordly
Friend, condescend
Here to sit by me and turn
Glorious eyes that smile and burn
Verse one of a poets lamentation on his dying cat. I believe algernon Swinburne one of my favorites.
I learned The Eagle as a child. I still remember it. I love memorizing poems. They do become part of you. I’m 63 now!
I am glad you started memorizing poetry as a child. I only started in my mid-late 40s! Thank you for sharing ❤️
I may have the author mixed up with my 2nd favorite poem -I’m going to go verify that.
Thanks, Zina for these tips. I have been trying to memorize a poem a day for April or at least part of a poem a day. I find that poems with meter and reptation are the easiest. I need to read the poem, write the poem out, and listen to it. Audio while I'm walking is key for me. I also outline the poem to remember keywords. I've done Mark Antony from Julius Caesar: Friends Romans Countrymen... Elisabeth Alexander's "When" and Diane Suess' a "Sonnet Like Poverty Teaches You What You Can Do Without.." Sonnets are a good length. "96 Vandam" by Gerald Stern is good one. Wallace Steven's "Snowman" and "Emperor of Ice Cream" will always stay with me. Louise Gluck's "Wild Iris" was very difficult for me, but the more I do the better I get.
Thank you, David. I love the speeches in Shakespeare’s plays, and the one by Mark Antony is one of my favorites. Sonnets are wonderful because there is also a set rhetorical pattern as well. Audio while walking does quite well, doesn’t it? I love all the poems you have mentioned, although I don’t know the Gerald Stern one. I shall look it up!
It was on the last New Yorker Poetry podcast, which I recommend.
I really enjoy that podcast by The New Yorker. There are actually quite a few podcasts that do a good job of examining a poem and introducing new poems/poets to listeners.
Do you listen to any others? Just curious. I ask because I like your taste in poetry.
Thanks! I like Poetry for All with Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — they make poetry accessible — and The Ode & Psyche Podcast with Bianca Stone — she’s all about the poet life.
I do love that Mark Strand poem --- which I don't think is really free verse (vers libre, maybe). The first line is trimeter, the second is tetrameter, but the rest are pentameter. That movement seems to echo the growing of the light, which is lovely. The lines, and the poem as a whole, are held together by repetitions of word and sound: "coming" in line 2, the alliteration of "love" and "light," "bones" and "body," the repeated phrase, "Even this late" at the beginning and again in the penultimate line.
So there's really a lot going on mnemonically in that short poem, even if it's not metrically regular or rhymed (features that always help!).
Probably everybody who ever knew Mark Strand has anecdotes about him, but one thing I most remember is coming to some workshop with the first remotely successful sonnet I had ever written, and Mark saying to me, "Isn't that great, writing in form? It just writes itself." It was one of the least ironic things I ever heard him say. And he was right.
I agree with you, that there is more form that meets the eye regarding form. It’s a bit closer to mixed meter then? This is a lovely explication of the sonic power of this poem; thank you so much for writing it! What I really love are the images as well. And when I recite it my hands sweep out when I say “the warm bouquets of air.” There is a great deal of physicality in this poem. At least for me there is.
The metrical pattern seems really measured and deliberate to me, at least in terms of the number of stresses per line, but so understated that it doesn't announce itself. Thank you for reminding me of it! It is full of quiet marvels.
Love this! e e cummings's "i thank you god for most this amazing" is one of my favourites, and I still remember most of it years after memorising it and performing it. You've inspired me to try more! What a fun thing to do instead of being on our phones ;) "The Red Wheelbarrow" and "I'm nobody" brought back great memories of my university days - thank you.
Oh, I love this! This poem by e e cummings is my favorite: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/153877/somewhere-i-have-never-travelledgladly-beyond
And I think there is something about cummings that makes people think it can’t be performed because of the typography, but I think it is splendid you have “i thank you god for most this amazing” in your heart. Such a wonderful thing to have a common vernacular in poetry, to have affection for the same words and images!
I think "i thank you god" works beautifully as a spoken word piece too - and did you know there's a choir song arrangement of the lines "now the ears of my eyes awaken and now the eyes of my eyes are open." god, it still gives me shivers typing it)? Wow, that poem had me in tears - thanks for sharing. So powerful!
What an interesting post.
I also find that writing the poem down in longhand helps me to memorise it. I tend to 'photograph' the poem on the page in my mind.
And if it rhymes, the last word of a line helps to prompt the next.
And the theme itself matters; one stanza can lead logically to the next.
Some poems I have memorised this year: Ozymandias by Shelley; La Figlia Che Piange by TSE; Acquainted with the Night, Frost; Hymn to God the Father, Donne; The Habit of Perfection, GM Hopkins; When I have fears, Keats; The Way through the Woods, Kipling; An Irish Airman, Yeats; That Time of Year thou mayest in me behold, WS; Plead for Me, Emily Brontë; This World is not Conclusion, Dickinson.
What does it mean to say 'They become part of you'? I think it means they become embedded in the psyche, shaping in an definable way how one thinks, how one experiences and how one writes oneself...
Gah! I think I need to do an internet search for ee cummings poetry set to music!
It's this one: https://thebirdsings.com/my-eyes-are-opened/
Wow. I listened to it yesterday. I love when musicians find inspiration in poetry and create art to transmute the essence of the poem from the page to the audio. It’s like an act of translation.
Yes! It's amazing. I sang it in a choir years ago and it was so powerful, especially because of my connection to the poem.
When I was young I memorized Tennyson's Crossing the Bar, which is short and very easy to learn. W.B. Yeats' Lake Isle of Innisfree is a pretty easy one too.
I also do the copying out by hand and taping the poem to the kitchen cabinet. What I do is read a line out loud, then close my eyes and try to repeat it without looking. I keep doing that until I can say the line without making a mistake. Then I do that for the next one and say the first and second line together. It really helps to get the kids involved. They remember faster than I do and start correcting me.
I once saw a video of an actor talking about tips and tricks for memorizing her lines. She said she'd write down the first letter of every word in a line and then use them as a memory aid. First she'd look at the line, then she'd look at the page with just the list of letters and usually it wasn't too hard to remember each word as she looked at the initial letters. Eventually she'd get to where she could do it without the list of letters.
Hi, Melanie! The whole kids correcting the parents is how I think I got one child to memorize Mary Oliver poems. The kitchen is a great space for poetry because everyone goes there. I should add that Tennyson and Yeats to the list. That’s interesting with the actress’s tip on writing down the letters. I think that is particularly good for visual learners. Perhaps the act of writing the letters helps. With me it seems like I need a great deal of physicality to get my mind engaged. I was never a sit down type of person. However, I think I will try the letter-writing method just to see how it turns out. Thanks for the advice!
I used to put poems (and art for picture study) on the fridge, to make it impossible to miss. And on a whiteboard on the wall beside the kitchen table, because again, we'd all be there.