The best way I've found to memorize poems is by performing them for my dog in the evenings on the couch, or in the car when we drive somewhere. Line by line, I speak and he listens . . . or sleeps. When I'm trying to commit a poem to memory it helps me to have an audience and he's a generous one! So far his favorite poem has been Wendell Berry's "What We Need Is Here." https://www.awakin.org/v2/read/view.php?tid=2144
As Padraig noted, music can be a very useful way of helping the brain (and heart) memorize poetry. If you’re fond of memorizing Wendell Berry, might I recommend a recording by Malcolm Dalglish and the Ooolites, Hymnody of the Earth, which is a joyous presentation of Berry’s poetry. Admittedly hard to find but still available on the Ooolitic Music website. And dogs benefit from music, too!
i also write them out, copy them- I still remember The Quality of Mercy" speech that Portia gives in the Merchant of Venice as well as Langston Hughes from 4th grade/ Hold Fast to Dreams.
Thank you so much for sharing that poem. It's new to me, but it immediately felt like an old friend. I will cherish it, and the memorization of it will help me to savor each line.
I would like to memorize somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond by E. E. Cummings. I don’t even remember the first time I read this poem—certainly not at school, since such works are rarely taught in local classrooms in Turkey. Unless you’re lucky enough to study literature at a good university, the world of great writing often remains out of reach. That wasn’t the case for me; I had to follow a path that would allow me to work and make a living. It’s a little sad, but that’s the reality. Over the years, it has been my own curiosity and passion that have guided me deeper into the world of literature.
Now, I’m thinking of framing this poem and hanging it in my room, so I can see it every day, savor each line, and hopefully commit it to memory, if my mind allows.
This was my poem too. I had it memorized in college, when I once recited it to a boyfriend. He then framed it for my birthday. I find I know music lyrics so well (the space in my head devoted to 80s lyrics is insane) so to memorize I tend to go the musical path.
A few nights ago I was feeling very lonely. I opened a book filled with poems written by Ryokan. There was a poem I don’t remember seeing/reading before. It was just what I needed:
“No one home.
Fallen pine needles
Scattered at the door.”
I was so touched, and soothed, by this poem that I composed a short piece of music for the Japanese shakuhachi bamboo flute inspired by this poem. I enjoy reciting a poem and then playing its accompanying music. My interest has been haiku. Soon enough, I had taken in the words and then, of course, there is the pleasure(and challenge, for I am new to the shakuhachi) of finding and feeling the poem within the sounds of this most challenging flute. 🏮
Thanks David for sharing this beautiful haiku and then reminding us that we can create music, perhaps, in my case singing a poem. I also appreciate how poetry can soothe the sad, scared or lonely soul, if we only remember the healing power of beauty.
I have not memorized a poem since I was in grade school and we memorized “I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree”
As I have aged, I have more difficulty with remembering facts and such. But poems have meant so much to me and have helped to navigate life and loss. There are three that I have hanging on my door to the hallway. The first is “In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver. The second is “Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you.” by Gabrielle Calvocoressi and lastly is “Heaven” by Patrick Phillips.
I am going to start with Mary Oliver. We shall see how it goes.
thank you for this prompt, I am about to start a poetic journey with a small group of women in which we will each choose a poem to work with for a month. We will dance with these poems, really get to know them intimately. Memorizing them will be part of it but I am also playing with other creative ideas to "embody" these poems. Suggestions anyone?
Matthew, thank you for this, I sent you a FB friend request to follow your work. At the moment, I am financially not able to attend anything, especially in any other currency, but I am hoping in the future it would be possible.
I've been listening to Poetry Unbound as I lie awake. Last night it was the Amichai poem, & both it and your commentary were what I needed to hear, as I waited for news of a friend, a wheelchair user, who was arrested on a Palestine demo in London.
I still have a lot of memorised poems that I return to. I'd like to memorise Louise Gluck's The Wild Iris. I just read, close the book, recite, reread. But I haven't for a while and could do with it.
I love memorizing Gerard Manley Hopkins poems for the sheer challenge of getting the words out right. And I love memorizing A.A. Milne’s poems for the sheer joy of the words tumbling out.
I memorised a poem a week - more or less - for a few months. It was supposed to be a year but I didn’t make it that far. I did the first run through while I walked the dogs in the morning. Then I’d recite it again throughout the day and before I went to sleep. I chose poems I thought of as talisman poems and was surprised when some of those failed my talisman test. Memorising makes you hear the faltering in a poem. These days I’m more generous about that.
For me a talismanic poem was one I would want to be able to remember if I were bereft of books or - I don’t know? - in solitary confinement. So something strong, thought-provoking or comforting. And, above all worth the effort! It was interesting the poems I thought would be make that grade but which I ended up rejecting. I wish I’d kept a list. I started with rhyming poems - easier to memorise - but added free verse as time went on. I restarted the project recently but bad weather has meant less walking.
I am always amazed when listening to David Whyte recite, by memory, his multitude of poems. How does he do that? There is certainly something powerful in knowing a poem by heart. Your question this morning, Pádraig, I am taking as an invitation? I will start by trying to memorize one of my own poems (one of my shorter ones). It’s interesting, sometimes when reading one of my poems, I am surprised by how it unfolds. Sometimes, I even wonder, did I write that poem? I will let you know at a later date what works for me in the memorization process and how it feels to know a poem by heart.
I’m hopeless at memorizing by heart. But I love it when words become embedded within and gently feed your soul. A while back I memorized Mary Oliver’s At Blackwater Ponds. The line that remains is “What is that beautiful thing that just happened to me?”
The last (and first) time I tried to memorize a poem was earlier this year. Ironically it was one of my own, having been invited to recite in public for the first time ever in my long, long, long life.
My method was similar to how you described yours, Padraig. Paper copies of it strewn around my living spaces, and an especially tattered copy in my back pocket, accompanying me throughout the day. Memorizing it one stanza at a time, always going back to the beginning to repeat what I had already learned, practicing the words at the breakfast table with my sweetie.
In the end, my stage fright had me so jangled that I couldn't remember my own name, nevermind the first word of my own poem. I opted to read it with shaking hands holding the paper and a trembling voice in my throat.
Though it wasn't a requirement to recite by rote, it did feel like a bit of a failure of my own making. That's o.k. The win for me is that now even though I still can't remember the whole poem by heart, it is indeed embedded there. Now, I find myself randomly whispering lines of it quietly in my mind. When self-doubt tries to rob my joy, I remember remembering this poem.
I i remember at our wedding in 1986 my husband and I realized we could not remember the poems we had tried to memorize so we read them off a paper. My husband pulled his from his inner jacket pocket and realized he had brought the catering bill not the poem so he read that aloud slowly and everybody roared!
Mine was by Alice Walker and it ended quote "The new face I lift up to you no one else on Earth has ever seen. " which was perfect for getting married at age 39 when I had known quite a few other people, but no one had seen the connection that I had with him.
During an intensely erotic (and nostalgic) period of my life, I memorized Pablo Neruda's Sonnet #12 in Spanish, imagining my ex-lover whispering it to me, as he once did with other poems. I'd like to know it again for myself, for the pure pleasure of the Spanish on my lips.
Soneto XII
Plena mujer, manzana carnal, luna caliente,
espeso aroma de algas, lodo y luz machacados,
qué oscura claridad se abre entre tus columnas?
Qué antigua noche el hombre toca con sus sentidos?
Ay, amar es un viaje con agua y con estrellas,
con aire ahogado y bruscas tempestades de harina:
amar es un combate de relámpagos
y dos cuerpos por una sola miel derrotados.
Beso a beso recorro tu pequeño infinito,
tus márgenes, tus ríos, tus pueblos diminutos,
y el fuego genital transformado en delicia
corre por los delgados caminos de la sangre
hasta precipitarse como un clavel nocturno,
hasta ser y no ser sino un rayo en la sombra.
Sonnet 12
Full woman, fleshy apple, hot moon,
thick smell of seaweed, crushed mud and light,
what obscure brilliance opens between your columns?
What ancient night does a man touch with his senses?
Loving is a journey with water and with stars,
with smothered air and abrupt storms of flour:
loving is a clash of lighting bolts
and two bodies defeated by a single drop of honey.
Kiss by kiss I move across your small infinity,
your borders, your rivers, your tiny villages,
and the genital fire transformed into delight
runs through the narrow pathways of the blood
until it plunges down, like a dark carnation,
until it is and is no more than a flash in the night.
Years ago I learned Neruda's sonnet 84, Cuando yo muera after one of my students whispered it to me. Afterwards I went to Spanish classes so that I could enjoy Neruda's poetry. (I might add "During an intensely erotic (and nostalgic) period of my life ...)!
One late December day in St. John's, Newfoundland, I whiled away the frigid cold wait for a late Metrobus by cleanminding (!!) all the verses of "O Little Town of Bethlehem." All the words had been in here somewhere, but the exercise of dragging them out of hiding and lining them up gave me a tiny epiphany, as if I were hearing the song for the first time. "How silently the wondrous gift is given."
I grew up with Shel Silverstein, and remember being in 4th grade when our teacher read Where the Sidewalk Ends to us. I thought the poem "Batty" was hilarious!
The baby bat/ Screamed out in fright/ "Turn on the dark,/ I'm afraid of the light."
I loved his humor and wit and funny pictures he's have with the poem.
The poem that I'd love to memorize is called Go to the Limits of Your Longing by Rainer Maria Rilke. I will work on it here, writing it out and testing my memory!
The best way I've found to memorize poems is by performing them for my dog in the evenings on the couch, or in the car when we drive somewhere. Line by line, I speak and he listens . . . or sleeps. When I'm trying to commit a poem to memory it helps me to have an audience and he's a generous one! So far his favorite poem has been Wendell Berry's "What We Need Is Here." https://www.awakin.org/v2/read/view.php?tid=2144
As Padraig noted, music can be a very useful way of helping the brain (and heart) memorize poetry. If you’re fond of memorizing Wendell Berry, might I recommend a recording by Malcolm Dalglish and the Ooolites, Hymnody of the Earth, which is a joyous presentation of Berry’s poetry. Admittedly hard to find but still available on the Ooolitic Music website. And dogs benefit from music, too!
Dogs are the best listeners 😎
i also write them out, copy them- I still remember The Quality of Mercy" speech that Portia gives in the Merchant of Venice as well as Langston Hughes from 4th grade/ Hold Fast to Dreams.
Thank you so much for sharing that poem. It's new to me, but it immediately felt like an old friend. I will cherish it, and the memorization of it will help me to savor each line.
This is such an admirable endeavor.
I would like to memorize somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond by E. E. Cummings. I don’t even remember the first time I read this poem—certainly not at school, since such works are rarely taught in local classrooms in Turkey. Unless you’re lucky enough to study literature at a good university, the world of great writing often remains out of reach. That wasn’t the case for me; I had to follow a path that would allow me to work and make a living. It’s a little sad, but that’s the reality. Over the years, it has been my own curiosity and passion that have guided me deeper into the world of literature.
Now, I’m thinking of framing this poem and hanging it in my room, so I can see it every day, savor each line, and hopefully commit it to memory, if my mind allows.
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
This was my poem too. I had it memorized in college, when I once recited it to a boyfriend. He then framed it for my birthday. I find I know music lyrics so well (the space in my head devoted to 80s lyrics is insane) so to memorize I tend to go the musical path.
So lovely!!!
Have loved this poem forever!
Me too!
Thank for this poem.
Thanks for reading!
oooh - I like this idea!
Thanks!
A few nights ago I was feeling very lonely. I opened a book filled with poems written by Ryokan. There was a poem I don’t remember seeing/reading before. It was just what I needed:
“No one home.
Fallen pine needles
Scattered at the door.”
I was so touched, and soothed, by this poem that I composed a short piece of music for the Japanese shakuhachi bamboo flute inspired by this poem. I enjoy reciting a poem and then playing its accompanying music. My interest has been haiku. Soon enough, I had taken in the words and then, of course, there is the pleasure(and challenge, for I am new to the shakuhachi) of finding and feeling the poem within the sounds of this most challenging flute. 🏮
Thanks David for sharing this beautiful haiku and then reminding us that we can create music, perhaps, in my case singing a poem. I also appreciate how poetry can soothe the sad, scared or lonely soul, if we only remember the healing power of beauty.
I have not memorized a poem since I was in grade school and we memorized “I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree”
As I have aged, I have more difficulty with remembering facts and such. But poems have meant so much to me and have helped to navigate life and loss. There are three that I have hanging on my door to the hallway. The first is “In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver. The second is “Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you.” by Gabrielle Calvocoressi and lastly is “Heaven” by Patrick Phillips.
I am going to start with Mary Oliver. We shall see how it goes.
thank you for this prompt, I am about to start a poetic journey with a small group of women in which we will each choose a poem to work with for a month. We will dance with these poems, really get to know them intimately. Memorizing them will be part of it but I am also playing with other creative ideas to "embody" these poems. Suggestions anyone?
print them on t-shirts??
You could tattoo them on temporarily- writing the words that stand out on your body
Filiz! Good to see your orphany self here! You know about my course in approaching poetry memorization and recitation. Come one of these days!
Matthew, thank you for this, I sent you a FB friend request to follow your work. At the moment, I am financially not able to attend anything, especially in any other currency, but I am hoping in the future it would be possible.
What a fantastic idea!
I am excited to experiment! :)
I've been listening to Poetry Unbound as I lie awake. Last night it was the Amichai poem, & both it and your commentary were what I needed to hear, as I waited for news of a friend, a wheelchair user, who was arrested on a Palestine demo in London.
I still have a lot of memorised poems that I return to. I'd like to memorise Louise Gluck's The Wild Iris. I just read, close the book, recite, reread. But I haven't for a while and could do with it.
Oh, my, what a poem! Thank you.
I love memorizing Gerard Manley Hopkins poems for the sheer challenge of getting the words out right. And I love memorizing A.A. Milne’s poems for the sheer joy of the words tumbling out.
I love Gerard Manley Hopkins, especially "the terrible sonnets." They're so honest.
I memorised a poem a week - more or less - for a few months. It was supposed to be a year but I didn’t make it that far. I did the first run through while I walked the dogs in the morning. Then I’d recite it again throughout the day and before I went to sleep. I chose poems I thought of as talisman poems and was surprised when some of those failed my talisman test. Memorising makes you hear the faltering in a poem. These days I’m more generous about that.
What a lofty goal - memorizing a poem a week! I am curious what you mean by a "talisman poem"?
For me a talismanic poem was one I would want to be able to remember if I were bereft of books or - I don’t know? - in solitary confinement. So something strong, thought-provoking or comforting. And, above all worth the effort! It was interesting the poems I thought would be make that grade but which I ended up rejecting. I wish I’d kept a list. I started with rhyming poems - easier to memorise - but added free verse as time went on. I restarted the project recently but bad weather has meant less walking.
I am always amazed when listening to David Whyte recite, by memory, his multitude of poems. How does he do that? There is certainly something powerful in knowing a poem by heart. Your question this morning, Pádraig, I am taking as an invitation? I will start by trying to memorize one of my own poems (one of my shorter ones). It’s interesting, sometimes when reading one of my poems, I am surprised by how it unfolds. Sometimes, I even wonder, did I write that poem? I will let you know at a later date what works for me in the memorization process and how it feels to know a poem by heart.
I feel that way about my writing too sometimes. Especially when I’ve stepped away from it for a while. My mind always surprises me.
Now in my sixties , I
Find myself reaching more and more for poetry. Reading poetry.
Writing poetry.
Journaling with poetry.
I welcome this task of also learning the poetry by heart , memorizing and reciting.
Self awareness, self discovery, learning to be where I am as I grapple with time.
I think that I will begin by trying to memorize a poem by May Sarton
‘Now I Become Myself’
Then I think I may try to memorize poems that I have written for myself , to myself.
I recently have been looking back at poems I have written in my
Notes, journals and not remembering that I wrote them. “Did I write that?”
Thankyou for today’s inspiration
I’m hopeless at memorizing by heart. But I love it when words become embedded within and gently feed your soul. A while back I memorized Mary Oliver’s At Blackwater Ponds. The line that remains is “What is that beautiful thing that just happened to me?”
Thank you for your posts. Inspiring
The last (and first) time I tried to memorize a poem was earlier this year. Ironically it was one of my own, having been invited to recite in public for the first time ever in my long, long, long life.
My method was similar to how you described yours, Padraig. Paper copies of it strewn around my living spaces, and an especially tattered copy in my back pocket, accompanying me throughout the day. Memorizing it one stanza at a time, always going back to the beginning to repeat what I had already learned, practicing the words at the breakfast table with my sweetie.
In the end, my stage fright had me so jangled that I couldn't remember my own name, nevermind the first word of my own poem. I opted to read it with shaking hands holding the paper and a trembling voice in my throat.
Though it wasn't a requirement to recite by rote, it did feel like a bit of a failure of my own making. That's o.k. The win for me is that now even though I still can't remember the whole poem by heart, it is indeed embedded there. Now, I find myself randomly whispering lines of it quietly in my mind. When self-doubt tries to rob my joy, I remember remembering this poem.
I i remember at our wedding in 1986 my husband and I realized we could not remember the poems we had tried to memorize so we read them off a paper. My husband pulled his from his inner jacket pocket and realized he had brought the catering bill not the poem so he read that aloud slowly and everybody roared!
Mine was by Alice Walker and it ended quote "The new face I lift up to you no one else on Earth has ever seen. " which was perfect for getting married at age 39 when I had known quite a few other people, but no one had seen the connection that I had with him.
this is HYSTERICAL and just what i needed. so much "yes, and" by your husband and a good sign that you found a 'keeper.'
Lol. He was. 39 years later and still a keeper
What a tale of beautiful bravery! Your poem is part of you now
Can we say nearly every Hafiz poem or maybe just this one:
SOMEONE UNTIED YOUR CAMEL
I cannot sit still with my countrymen in chains.
I cannot act mute
Hearing the world’s loneliness
Crying near the Beloved’s heart.
My love for God is such
That I could dance with Him tonight without you,
But I would rather have you there.
Is your caravan lost?
It is,
If you no longer weep from gratitude or happiness,
Or weep
From being cut deep with the awareness
Of the extraordinary beauty
That emanates from the most simple act
And common object.
My dear, is your caravan lost?
It is if you can no longer be kind to yourself
And loving to those who must live
With the sometimes difficult task of loving you.
At least come to know
That someone untied your camel last night
For I hear its gentle voice
Calling for God in the desert.
At least come to know
That Hafiz will always hold a lantern
With galaxies blooming inside
And that
I will always guide your soul to
The divine warmth and exhilaration
Of our Beloved’s
Tent.
It takes so long to get through all the comments on these posts! Each one a journey to words I so appreciate!
It's like an oasis of calm for me. I so appreciate this community.
That is beautiful.
very beautiful and moving.
During an intensely erotic (and nostalgic) period of my life, I memorized Pablo Neruda's Sonnet #12 in Spanish, imagining my ex-lover whispering it to me, as he once did with other poems. I'd like to know it again for myself, for the pure pleasure of the Spanish on my lips.
Soneto XII
Plena mujer, manzana carnal, luna caliente,
espeso aroma de algas, lodo y luz machacados,
qué oscura claridad se abre entre tus columnas?
Qué antigua noche el hombre toca con sus sentidos?
Ay, amar es un viaje con agua y con estrellas,
con aire ahogado y bruscas tempestades de harina:
amar es un combate de relámpagos
y dos cuerpos por una sola miel derrotados.
Beso a beso recorro tu pequeño infinito,
tus márgenes, tus ríos, tus pueblos diminutos,
y el fuego genital transformado en delicia
corre por los delgados caminos de la sangre
hasta precipitarse como un clavel nocturno,
hasta ser y no ser sino un rayo en la sombra.
Sonnet 12
Full woman, fleshy apple, hot moon,
thick smell of seaweed, crushed mud and light,
what obscure brilliance opens between your columns?
What ancient night does a man touch with his senses?
Loving is a journey with water and with stars,
with smothered air and abrupt storms of flour:
loving is a clash of lighting bolts
and two bodies defeated by a single drop of honey.
Kiss by kiss I move across your small infinity,
your borders, your rivers, your tiny villages,
and the genital fire transformed into delight
runs through the narrow pathways of the blood
until it plunges down, like a dark carnation,
until it is and is no more than a flash in the night.
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
Etiquetas: Pablo Neruda
Whew! Is it getting hot in here?? 😉😆
Years ago I learned Neruda's sonnet 84, Cuando yo muera after one of my students whispered it to me. Afterwards I went to Spanish classes so that I could enjoy Neruda's poetry. (I might add "During an intensely erotic (and nostalgic) period of my life ...)!
One late December day in St. John's, Newfoundland, I whiled away the frigid cold wait for a late Metrobus by cleanminding (!!) all the verses of "O Little Town of Bethlehem." All the words had been in here somewhere, but the exercise of dragging them out of hiding and lining them up gave me a tiny epiphany, as if I were hearing the song for the first time. "How silently the wondrous gift is given."
I grew up with Shel Silverstein, and remember being in 4th grade when our teacher read Where the Sidewalk Ends to us. I thought the poem "Batty" was hilarious!
The baby bat/ Screamed out in fright/ "Turn on the dark,/ I'm afraid of the light."
I loved his humor and wit and funny pictures he's have with the poem.
The poem that I'd love to memorize is called Go to the Limits of Your Longing by Rainer Maria Rilke. I will work on it here, writing it out and testing my memory!
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.