I cannot even begin to put into my own words how essential poetry turns out to be for this experiment in being human.
I have a handful of poems that are nearly always kicking around in my head and come up in snips and tatters in idle moments. Sometimes it's an actual liturgy -- often, when I'm walking, i get snippets of thomas cranmer's english on endless loops through my mind -- but more often than not it's a figurative one, though no less grounding for that.
Poems take a language and bend it past its breaking point, without breaking it.
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in
books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.
I've got chunks of ancient epics, medieval poems, some reniassance works, not much that's restoration or romantic or victorian, and a healthy dose of 20th century stuff. Mostly all in english -- it's my only real natural language.
I just tried to make a comprehensive list, but I don't think it's productive. Things surface as they're needed, I think.
huh, the last sentence of my post got dropped; put it back now.
No, they're not mantras.
The easy answer is that rhythmicity of language is just fundamentally compelling to our minds at a very basic level, and poems are a way that we can bend and twist and revel in and celebrate with language that gets that.
There's often a "oh, you clever ... " satisfaction as a reader when the poet picks _just_ the perfect word to rhyme off and you're left almost gasping with ... something indescribable ... at how _right_ it was. It's a thing of beauty.
In translation, Hafiz: "... the Beloved / has just made such a fantastic move// that the saint is now continually/ tripping over Joy// and bursting out in laughter/ and saying "I Surrender!""
Watching someone, often someone long dead from a time and a place I can't even imagine, working within an often highly constrained form to produce something that still packs a punch -- something that can still reach out and wrench something loose inside your head, something that can communicate things that are probably ineffable -- when it happens to you, you'll know.
Good advice. I’ve memorized a lot of poems by reading them out loud three times a day. A sonnet or a few stanzas took me a few weeks. Some were pages long and took months. This method is slower than some others, but it’s foolproof, and since I only chose poems I loved, I didn’t mind spending the time with them.
When I was in college I was a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism (https://www.sca.org/). To provide an evening's entertainment, I adapted a folk tale, Why the Sea is Salt, into iambic pentameter.
It is meant to be performed vocally, not read. The first time I had to read it from my original manuscript (and it was a manuscript, written by hand with a pencil because this was the mid-80s). After that I decided I wouldn't perform it again until I had it all memorized. It took me over 30 years to get to the point where I was confident I had it memorized well enough to perform it without notes, but last year, over thirty years after its debut, I finally did it.
Then Covid happened. Now I recite it to myself in my head to help me fall asleep. It works remarkably well.
Heh, thanks. To really do it justice requires a bunch of people dressed in medieval garb and that could be a tall order under the circumstances. But let me see what I can do.
Please make this happen, even if you can't fully do it justice yet. I just read it aloud to myself and I love it. I might have to memorize this one myself while I'm stuck at home.
I've never been huge on poetry, but decided last year to memorize a poem each month. Totally doable, but I only made it through about four. My own laziness.
You get to know a poem so much better when you memorize it. You need to think about each word. Sometimes your brain wants to substitute another word and you have to think about why the poet chose the one they did instead of the one that might feel natural.
It feels like engaging in a great conversation. These poets all read each other's work, going back in this timeless chain into the distant past. And you can tell when one is responding to the words of another, who they know can never answer back, but there's a connection all the same.
Recognizing Ozymandias being recited in a Ballad of Buster Scruggs short felt like seeing a dear friend make a surprise cameo in a movie.
Plus, if you've got a flair for the dramatic, it's a neat party trick.
What was the criteria for the poems you decided to memorize? How did you pick - just based on stuff you already knew of, or did you actively pursue works new to you?
One of the hardest parts, tbh. Harder than actually memorizing. I went with classical sonnets, looked for greatest all time lists and found things that were new to me, had stood the test of time, and spoke to me in the moment.
Cool, thanks for the insight! I'm now considering attempting this as I've started worrying about memory and how to keep it active and healthy (in my mid 30s but people seem to make a big deal about it).
25 years ago, after a rafting trip in the Yukon and Alaska, I decided to memorize Service's The Cremation of Sam McGee. After working on it for about a month, I had it cold. Never attempted to recite it since. After seeing this article, I thought I would give it a shot. I stumbled over a couple of lines in the middle, but, overall, I remembered it pretty well. Now if I could only remember where I put my keys 60 minutes ago.
It's always a good time to exercise your brain in a different way. I started memorizing poetry while in high school just for the fun of it. Some I found motivational, some just silly - Jabberwocky almost broke me. Whitman - that man knew how to live. My favorite of all remains Poe's The Raven. It was the Simpson's shortened take on that poem that first drew my attention, but man, did Poe know how to tell a story, and the meter! Such a rhythm, such a beat that man had.
In learning other languages one of the greatest challenges of all is to understand their poetry. Pushkin, Lermontov in their original are treasures. If only I could understand them all without always keeping my dictionary handy.
It is always wonderful to find a poet's expressions when they have chosen a different way to say what I'm thinking. Mary Oliver's Summer Day is just a celebration of the wonders of life.
Also, this stuff is a great source of passwords. Nobody puts words together the way poets do.
For years, I used the walk to school (30 mins each way) to memorize many poems, especially Poe. The Bells, For Annie, The Raven - word for word. Walking was time to turn over the poetry in my mind and reflect on its meaning.
25 years later, and I can recite every poem from my youth, flawlessly. But they don't comfort me at night. I have the poems with me forever, but they are not useful day-to-day.
a dormmate used to play life goes on on repeat in college. i couldn't help but learn the words even as i quickly got tired of it. that 2pac was a lyrical genius.
If I should die think only this of me
That there is some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England.
There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
Where ever I am, there's always Pooh.
There's always Pooh and me.
Whatever I do, he wants to do.
"Where are you going today?" says Pooh.
"Well, that's very odd cos I was too."
"Let's go together" says Pooh, says he.
"Let's go together" says Pooh.
---
Memorized as a bored ten year old, 'playing' Encarta 95. The first entry - A.A. Milne.
I cannot memorize these poems, but I like to go back and read them from time to time. I cannot put into words the emotions they create other than powerful, but that doesn't do them justice.
They are the poems by Xu Lizhi.
The full list of poems he wrote is in the link but I will paste one.
This poem was the catalyst stopping me from purchasing the newest tech every year. New phone, new laptop, new devices....the magic of modern capitalism is that it hides the human cost of manufacturing. That said, perhaps having a job creates a better lifestyle in many parts of the world, but consumerism doesn't need to go at such an accelerated pace (IMHO).
Not just human cost, but also environmental, animal, and habitat. It's why I stopped purchasing things altogether, as much as I can. My costs are now limited largely to web hosting and water.
When I was in middle school (mid 80s) I had to memorize a poem. But I've forgotten the name of it. And I've forgotten the poem ;-) What I do remember is that it was about animals and was off the wall crazy (like poem about Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts). Does anyone know if there is a website where you can enter parameters and it will suggest possible matching poems? I'd really like to find it again.
I memorized The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock during my first job as an engineer out of college. The .Net codebase would take 3-4 minutes to compile. I printed out the poem and taped it up in my cubicle. On each compilation, I would work on memorizing a few lines. I had never done anything like it before but memorized all 140 lines in just a few weeks. 12 years later I still remember about 50% of it. It’s a famous enough poem that it comes up once every few years and I impress some friends or strangers. At this point the entire poem just feels like an old friend. It has been surprisingly rewarding investment of otherwise wasted time while waiting for a build to finish.
This is actually kind of fun, recently I memorized "Gather ye rosebuds" and Poe's "Dream within a Dream". Try the memory palace technique with someplace you recently visited.
Years ago I discovered that there are many poems you don't have to wilfully memorize, but which you "learn" like you learn melodies, very quickly and totally unconscious. For me, this includes for example Poe's "Raven" [0]. I once had a teacher who had memorized large parts of Goethe's "Faust" by accident, just by reading it every year she taught it in class.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] threadI have a handful of poems that are nearly always kicking around in my head and come up in snips and tatters in idle moments. Sometimes it's an actual liturgy -- often, when I'm walking, i get snippets of thomas cranmer's english on endless loops through my mind -- but more often than not it's a figurative one, though no less grounding for that.
Poems take a language and bend it past its breaking point, without breaking it.
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.
I've got chunks of ancient epics, medieval poems, some reniassance works, not much that's restoration or romantic or victorian, and a healthy dose of 20th century stuff. Mostly all in english -- it's my only real natural language.
I just tried to make a comprehensive list, but I don't think it's productive. Things surface as they're needed, I think.
No, they're not mantras.
The easy answer is that rhythmicity of language is just fundamentally compelling to our minds at a very basic level, and poems are a way that we can bend and twist and revel in and celebrate with language that gets that.
There's often a "oh, you clever ... " satisfaction as a reader when the poet picks _just_ the perfect word to rhyme off and you're left almost gasping with ... something indescribable ... at how _right_ it was. It's a thing of beauty.
In translation, Hafiz: "... the Beloved / has just made such a fantastic move// that the saint is now continually/ tripping over Joy// and bursting out in laughter/ and saying "I Surrender!""
Watching someone, often someone long dead from a time and a place I can't even imagine, working within an often highly constrained form to produce something that still packs a punch -- something that can still reach out and wrench something loose inside your head, something that can communicate things that are probably ineffable -- when it happens to you, you'll know.
The method also works for prose.
http://www.flownet.com/ron/salt.txt
It is meant to be performed vocally, not read. The first time I had to read it from my original manuscript (and it was a manuscript, written by hand with a pencil because this was the mid-80s). After that I decided I wouldn't perform it again until I had it all memorized. It took me over 30 years to get to the point where I was confident I had it memorized well enough to perform it without notes, but last year, over thirty years after its debut, I finally did it.
Then Covid happened. Now I recite it to myself in my head to help me fall asleep. It works remarkably well.
http://www.flownet.com/ron/salt.mp3
Some day I'll try to get a visual version done.
You get to know a poem so much better when you memorize it. You need to think about each word. Sometimes your brain wants to substitute another word and you have to think about why the poet chose the one they did instead of the one that might feel natural.
It feels like engaging in a great conversation. These poets all read each other's work, going back in this timeless chain into the distant past. And you can tell when one is responding to the words of another, who they know can never answer back, but there's a connection all the same.
Recognizing Ozymandias being recited in a Ballad of Buster Scruggs short felt like seeing a dear friend make a surprise cameo in a movie.
Plus, if you've got a flair for the dramatic, it's a neat party trick.
In learning other languages one of the greatest challenges of all is to understand their poetry. Pushkin, Lermontov in their original are treasures. If only I could understand them all without always keeping my dictionary handy.
It is always wonderful to find a poet's expressions when they have chosen a different way to say what I'm thinking. Mary Oliver's Summer Day is just a celebration of the wonders of life.
Also, this stuff is a great source of passwords. Nobody puts words together the way poets do.
https://youtu.be/bLiXjaPqSyY
http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/philip_larkin/poems...
25 years later, and I can recite every poem from my youth, flawlessly. But they don't comfort me at night. I have the poems with me forever, but they are not useful day-to-day.
I don't recommend memorizing old poetry.
Moments go by swiftly and are lost
To squander time is a great shame
Do not waste your life
Hog go hang a salami
This sentence no verb
---
Memorized as a bored ten year old, 'playing' Encarta 95. The first entry - A.A. Milne.
"Ode to a Goldfish", Ogden Nash.
Oh, wet pet
[my interpretation: to be declaimed grandly as a great epic, before tailing off as if you've forgotten]
They are the poems by Xu Lizhi.
The full list of poems he wrote is in the link but I will paste one.
《一颗螺丝掉在地上》 "A Screw Fell to the Ground"
一颗螺丝掉在地上 A screw fell to the ground
在这个加班的夜晚 In this dark night of overtime
垂直降落，轻轻一响 Plunging vertically, lightly clinking
不会引起任何人的注意 It won’t attract anyone’s attention
就像在此之前 Just like last time
某个相同的夜晚 On a night like this
有个人掉在地上 When someone plunged to the ground
https://libcom.org/blog/xulizhi-foxconn-suicide-poetry
That's what I like to eat
---
Ah, middle school. Good times.
The poem I trying to remember had nothing to do with gopher guts ;-) It was also very long, unlike the gopher guts song.
[0] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48860/the-raven