Monday, January 7, 2008

 

Poetry to Memorize. Jough Dempsey has a good poetry page, good both for its selection of memorizable poems, for its poems as poems, and for his commentary.
One of the best aspects of learning a poem by heart is that you get to take a poem inside of yourself. It becomes a part of you. That sounds touchy-feely, but it’s true. When you memorize a poem it is no longer just a poem, but your poem. It’s in your head, and you can call it up from memory as you would any other experience.
He has “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost, “For Whom The Bell Tolls” by John Donne, “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W. H. Auden, “Tears, Idle Tears” by Alfred Lord Tennyson. They aren't easy to memorize, but they are good poems.

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