Memorizing Poems
September 7, 2006
Lately I’ve started memorizing poems– just short, favorite, mostly rhyming poems that I’ve always loved by Shelley, Hopkins, Cummings, etc.
It started as something to do during the interminable walks I’ve started going on in an attempt to work some exercise into my otherwise sedentary lifestyle, but it’s become an important part of my day.
As a poet, I’m stalled out. I still love poetry. I feel its seductive power every day. I’m confident in what I care for, and as a reader I’m happier than I’ve been in many years– maybe even since I was a child. But words and lines and images just aren’t coming to me, though I scribble something down almost every day, faithfully waiting for the muse to return and join me.
But the memorizing is taking me to a deeper relationship with the words, even with poems I’ve known and loved since childhood. Hopkins’ “Spring and Fall” is a good example. I’ve read that poem for 25 years and only in the enforced repetition of memorizing did it finally open up fully to me… not the clear meaning, but the rhythms and the construction. I found poetic enlightenment through repetition. Similarly with Shelley’s “Ozymandias”– another poem whose obvious meaning has always resonated with me which I recognize as a complete master work only after memorizing it (blog disputes aside).
It’s not just the repetition, or even the attention. At some point while I’m memorizing a poem it will seem to come apart– like a word that’s been repeated so many times it suddenly seems new in one’s mouth– and then reconfigure itself anew. Suddenly some element I’d never really noticed or understood will make sense in a burst of mental light. Those moments are what I work for, the reader’s equivalent of a runner’s high, bursting through the wall.
It gives me hope. Hope because sometimes I forget there is beauty in this world and doubt the power of words. Hope because through this connection maybe I will find my own words again…
Tags:
creativity, memorization, ozymandias, poetry, repetition, shelley
All me-stream all the time.
content rss
September 8th, 2006 at 7:27 am
I especially love the line:
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie
It feels delicious on the tongue. Thanks for sharing.
September 18th, 2006 at 10:08 am
I wonder if this textbox will accept
pentameter, or if it cuts it off?
It’s worth a try. lets see how long a line
this thing can take? Hexameters or more? fourteeners now? Swinburnian no less?
September 18th, 2006 at 1:09 pm
Continuing
“Cats mew. Horses scream. Man singâ€
Henry 41: 5-6
It’s what we do. But why? A mating song?
Then why the sudden lines coming around
In moments of our perishable bliss?
Or maybe like a heartbeat we go on
In simple repetition, muscular
Pulsing in rhythm as a metronome?
I can’t believe that. Is it to be known?
“A breath of wind is all there is to fame.â€
And who can feed his own with honor on
What most are like to buy? Or are our hands
Spraypainted on cave walls a sign we were
And are no more? Or do we in harsh times
Remain to draw collective breath in pain
To witness, or to fabricate a myth?
Or are we humbly praying, from our knees?
These are no answers. There are only two
And one is Walt’s: the play goes on and we
May give a verse. The other’s mine: the Muse
Gives us a gift, for her delight, and we
Sing only to delight her countenance.
I make you now this offer, my old friend:
Take this, my arm, and we will sing each day
Two old men, practicing a young man’s craft
Delighting her, as long as our light lasts.