I’ve been thinking lately about poetry, about what sticks in our minds when we hear a poem. The sound of the words, the rhythm of the meter. I was watching TV the other day and heard some lines that I knew immediately were Shakespeare, even though I was unfamiliar with them. They just sounded like Shakespeare, you know? I often wish that I had read more poetry growing up, or had some way of bridging the gap between Shel Silverstein and my college-assigned Norton Anthology of English Literature. The pieces that did fill in that gap were poems in other books, poems that characters I loved had studied and, usually, memorized for recitation to a group. I remember being wowed by this as a kid. Anne Shirley really stood up there and recited all of “The Highwayman” at the White Sands Hotel? Mary, Laura, and Carrie Ingalls really had enough poetry memorized to take turns reciting over a whole afternoon when they were snowed in during a blizzard? That cemented it; memorizing poetry was cool, and when I was grown up I would have swarms of smart, literary friends and we would all go around quoting poetry to one another all the time, as the girls in my favorites stories did.
While I am blessed to have smart, literary friends, the “quoting poetry” bit of that dream has not panned out as I thought it might. Here and now, however, I want to become an advocate for memorizing poetry. And I know of a good place to start! My new favorite library find is a poetry collection selected by former Children’s Poet Laureate Mary Ann Hoberman, called Forget-Me-Nots: Poems to Learn by Heart. They range from funny (“Eletelephony” by Laura E. Richards) to serious (“Poem” by Langston Hughes) and very short (“A word is dead” by Emily Dickinson”) to intimidatingly long (“The Jumblies” by Edward Lear). Illustrations are by Michael Emberley, and the collection is helpfully broken up into categories, like “Beautiful Beasts” and “Weather and Seasons.” I think my favorite section is “Poems from Storybooks,” which includes bits from James and the Giant Peach and The Fellowship of the Ring. Many of the poems are rhyming narratives, which I think helps with memorization; it’s fun to think of this process as just telling a story out loud.
There is always a case for reading poetry, and others have made that point much more eloquently than I can do here. But I do think there is an important quality to memorization, as we recognize when we memorize Scripture. We are holding the words closer to our hearts when we memorize them, keeping them on the top shelf of our mind so we can call them up when we need to, or even just when we want to. Wouldn’t it be fun to stroll along on a rainy day and just have Langston Hughes’ “April Rain Song” right there, ready for your enjoyment and reflection? Forget-Me-Nots has made me consider again the virtues of poetry memorization, and I can’t wait to start.
What about you? If you or your family have any favorite poems memorized, I’d love to hear about them!
You can find her on Instagram @bookishredreads, sharing more books that are lovely, fun, or interesting.
- “Pax” and Animal Stories - July 31, 2024
- Michael Morpugo’s “The Puffin Keeper” - February 14, 2024
- Making the World More Beautiful (with Miss Rumphius) - May 17, 2023
We have made memorizing poetry a mainstay in our home school. My older children have memorized upwards of 100 poems, and the young ones are following suit. We have found Andrew Pudewa’s Poetry Memorization Bundle to help us. That gave us a starting off point, and then we have just added on from there!
I always enjoy your posts :-). We did memorise poetry for school and I am sure that instilled the habit; but the first poem I *remember* memorising as a little girl was just because I had to keep it in my mind of it after falling over it, privately browsing around a collection — ‘Kubla Khan’ by Coleridge. I had no idea what it meant. Something about the way it sounded compelled me not to let it go. That was true of many poems I (privately) memorised growing up — I grew into understanding them out of loving their music. (& today I did actually quote in conversation a poem by Sara Teasdale — okay to quote here because not undercopyright.) Somehow even much of what I memorise and love and want to keep forever slips away — I can no longer quote most of Kubla Khan. But I think it stays in the leaf litter of our mind even if it isn’t accessible on the top shelf.
Until I lose my soul and lie
Blind to the beauty of the earth,
Deaf though shouting wind goes by,
Dumb in a storm of mirth;
Until my heart is quenched at length
And I have left the land of men —
O let me love with all my strength,
Careless if I am loved again.
Isabel, I love that phrase – “grew into understanding them out of loving their music.” I think that describes my relationship with a lot of poetry, too!