Last year I went to dinner with a teacher from Don’s school who has since retired from grade school resource room teaching and now teaches at the University. Thank goodness she’s being utilized this way, because Marilyn has a mind that astonishes.
Sitting at Sultan’s eating schwarma before going to a lecture at the University, we discussed poetry, among other things. She knew I was a writer. She asked what poems I’ve memorized written by other poets. I looked at her, “um, well, maybe a couple.”
“Why!” she asked. And she proceeded to praise the benefits of memorizing and reciting poems.
Well,
John Hollander, at the request of the
Academy of American Poets, has compiled an anthology of over 100 poems for memorization:
Committed to Memory: 100 Best Poems to Memorize. The poems were chosen mostly for younger readers. They are short, but not too short. Many have rhyme, because free verse is harder to remember/memorize.
Don has taught his 4th graders to memorize Carl Sandberg’s “Fog” and Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” I learned them with him during those times. (Those are the “couple” I told Marilyn I know.)
Fog
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
- Carl Sandberg
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
*
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
*
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
*
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
- Robert Frost
Hollander’s anthology includes
sonnets (such as Shakespeare’s #18
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”),
songs (such as Blake’s
“The Tyger”),
counsels (such as
“Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas),
tales (such as
“Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll), and
meditations (such as
“To Autumn” by Keats).
This anthology is of poems written in English. I would like to add poems written in other languages that have been translated well, if I’m going to memorize poems. I'll have to figure out which ones these will be, need to read more.
The benefits of memorizing poetry are maintaining oral traditions, hearing the melodies of the words, not just reading them, using and challening your brain in ways other activities don’t. And reciting poems together with someone you like is a treat.
Will you join me?
