The Poetry Memorization Encouragement Thread

Based on Murr's comment:

Perhaps we should start a 'encouragement thread' for people who want to learn poetry?

in the Interesting Articles thread, here it is!

In that thread, several of us discussed this New York Times essay on the joys of memorizing poetry and reflected on how we wish we had remembered some of the poetry we used to know. The essay has various suggestions on how to memorize poetry and Murr added some, including copying poems you want to learn into a notebook and carrying it around.

I see this thread as a place to encourage each other, track our progress, suggest poems to memorize, and whatever else seems helpful/interesting.

To start things off, I memorized the first four lines of "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" by Keats this morning.

I used to memorise poetry until I became an adult. What happened?? I'll take the challenge and start with Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot.

Oh good for you Rebecca, for getting started.

One of the things I find when memorizing poetry is that one's appreciation of -not to mention understanding of- the poem really deepens as you learn it. Learning it becomes really 'learning' it. It's like a kind of meditation which makes poetry intimately a part of your life, and what could be better than that?

It'd be fascinating to hear what you learn about the Keats. I hope we can also share insights into what we're learning.

Oh fabulous Amanda!!!!!!!!

I haven't decided on my poem for this week, but I have spent the last two weeks learning Dylan Thomas's poem Lament. It's ribald and funny and has a great rolicking rhythm which I love declaiming in the shower. I'm in the middle of a three poem DT burst, then I'm planning to do three Shakespeare sonnets.

Any suggestions?

I have always liked this poem, particularly the last two lines where the men look at each other with "wild surmise" (of course it was Balboa, not Cortez, but I guess that's poetic license). And it seemed easier to memorize than a lot of other poems I like, so I decided to start with something that would encourage me to continue.

What I've already learned that I never noticed before is that Keats uses the word "many" in two consecutive lines. Not a deep insight, but surprising.

I fear that every poem I was made to memorize in school must have been recorded in brain cells killed by alcohol. Only two poems survive, both learned as a young adult, Kipling's "Gunga Din" and Service's "The Cremation of Sam McGee". The latter usually dragged out when actually viewing Northern Lights in front of friends who cheer because they've had way too much Creemore Premium Lager.

I am so bummed out! My one "learning disability" - if it technically is one - is the inability to memorize things. It's so bad that in college, where English majors were required to memorize 14 lines per week in the first two introductory courses, I had to get special authorization from the Dean to get out of the requirement so that I was spared the embarrassment of failing.

Oh well - I will have fun "watching" you all learn some good poems.

Talbin, do not despair. Learn epigrams or couplets!

>I think I shall re-memorize some Dickinson . . .

I had a professor who had memorized all of Spenser's The Faerie Queene. However, I decline to follow his example. I love The Faerie Queene, but memorizing 400 pages of small print text is not my idea of a good time. Maybe I will memorize Hiawatha . . .

Forth upon the Gitche Gumee,
On the shining Big-Sea-Water,
With his fishing-line of cedar,
Of the twisted bark of cedar,
Forth to catch the sturgeon Nahma,
Mishe-Nahma, King of Fishes,
In his birch canoe exulting
All alone went Hiawatha.

. . . or maybe not ;-)

P.S. Talbin, learn haiku or better yet limericks:

There was an Old Person whose habits,
Induced him to feed upon rabbits;
When he'd eaten eighteen,
He turned perfectly green,
Upon which he relinquished those habits.

by Edward Lear

Lear's limericks often bugged me as he insisted on repeating the 1st end word as the last line's rhyme.

I'm always surprised by the authors of modestly salacious limericks. That was one of my dad's many wordy hobbies - but growing up as the scion of a long, long line of religious hard cases can do that (check samuel gorton) can do that. One of the epidemiologists i've worked w/ forever turns out to write delicate examples of the genre. But then he's Episcopalian.

i like the memorizing lines bit though - unlike my sister who and can will reel off reams of Shakespeare at the drop of a long distance phone call - i'm not very adept at memorization.

When I was in elementary school, every morning our teacher would write 2 line of poetry on the blackboard. By the end of the day, we had them memorized. When we had learned one poem, we started another. (I remember "High Flight" & "If" &"The midnight ride of Paul Revere" among others) In Jr. Hi, we were given sections of long poems & then whole poems to memorize. The teacher would call on kids at random to stand in front of the class & recite. In our Hi school, the students were divided into "Tracks" like secretarial, mechanical, college bound, ect. We college bound types memorized a lot of the Romantic poets as well as Whitman, Longfellow, & also given a choice . Each year we did a Shakespeare play & memorized various sections which we were tested on - written, not recited. I still remember the prologue to Evangeline, & bits of Hiawatha & scenes from MacBeth.

A teacher told us that when she was in school they would have special programs of "recitations" in the evening for the parents with the children all dressed up & also some singing & piano playing with refreshments served afterward. This was in the days before radio, or TV. It was a way of becoming a part of the community as older people who didn't have children or grandchildren or single people also came. These were usually held in various church basements, but didn't have anything to do with religion.

Because memorizing poetry is no longer a requirement in our schools (& the favorite poet is Shel Silverstein & his imitators) no one should be surprised that poetry is declining.

Memorization of poetry once came up, years ago, in a conversation I was having with an almost- (now ex-) boyfriend. 'Do you know any poems by heart?' he asked me. Only one, I replied, and launched into Dorothy Parker's "Resume" (razors pain you, rivers are damp...) Suddenly looking wide-eyed and utterly dumbfounded, he joined in and we finished the poem in unison. It was one of the few he knew by heart too.

Heh. Looking back, I guess that ought to have maybe made me think twice about the relationship... but I always was a sucker for guys who read.

Ahem -- from memory:

Razors pain you
Rivers are damp
Acids stain you
And guns cause cramp
Guns aren't lawful
Nooses give
Gas smells awful
You might as well live.

;-)

I remember the stunned looks on the faces of my students many many years ago as I recited Dulce et Decorum Est off the top of my head. And now? "I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled." Jabberwocky I could probably still do. Frost and Shakespeare. But it's been many years since I've memorized anything. I also don't know where to start. Dickinson? "The carriage held but ourselves/and Immortality." I will have to ponder.

#16: Polu,
Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogroves
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Especially "the vorpal blade went snicker-snack/He left it dead, and with its head/He went galumphing back." There is just something about that poem that demands being committed to memory.

I've lost all the Shakespeare I knew; Milton is gone (mumble mumble from the craggy tops of Mona high..all I can remember).

You roll your trouser bottoms; I shall wear purple and learn to spit.

Thanks, tiffin. Great stuff, isn't it? I sure hope my vorpal blade will always go snicker-snack.

My grandfather gave me a copy of "If" in Czech translation, when I was about seven.

Maybe I should memorize that, what do you think? A little too didactic perhaps. For a younger, more idealistic audience.

Do you mean the Kipling "If" where you keep your head when everyone else is losing theirs? I think it would be impressive in Czech but I wouldn't know if you were fudging it or not. ;)

I was thinking of a nice tidy little Shakespearean sonnet or something smallish by Donne. Maybe a Gerard Manley Hopkins. I'm making them sound like tea cakes.

Here's a short poem by Margaret Atwood.

You fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye

I dedicate he aforementioned poem to the devious cad and seducer of aging maidens: Baron von Kindle

Oh, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, that I am meek and gentle with these butchers! Thou art the ruin of the noblest man who ever lived in the tide of time.

O'er thy wounds now do I prophesy; which like poor, dumb mouths do ope' their ruby lips to beg the voice and utterance of my tongue.
..............and dreadful
acts so in evidence that mothers shall but smile when they behold their infants quarter'd in the hands of war.
..........spirit ranging for revenge, shall cry "Havoc" and let slip the dogs of war.

Ta!

Thought I would never forget this! Knew almost the whole play once.

Gone to look it up.

Can't remember ever being asked to memorise poetry at school - it seemed very out of fashion. I was interested but also afraid of the idea. A year or two ago I read Ted Hughes' book 'by heart' which introduced his technique for memorisation and described it in depth for a Hopkins poem, Inversnaid and then laid out another 100 poems to learn. It worked a treat but I didn't keep it up to learn many more, I should, I got a lot from it. Can only consider short poems also.

Tony, I thought I would only be able to learn short stuff too when I started, but then I realised that from a memorization point of view, a long poem is just a lot of short poems.The longest one I have by heart is Prufrock, followed by Kubla Kahn. I also have some long Shakespearian soliloquies.

Tiffin, Hopkins is fiendishly difficult to learn, at least I found it so. I would love to know how you find it.

I love Jabberwocky, and must learn that one soon as well!! P, it's a good idea to start with one you already half know, or that you have learnt before.

MY poem for this week is Dylan Thomas's Hold hard the ancient minutes in the cuckoo's mouth. It's about spring.

So we have a lot of interest, and five commitments so far: Rebecca on Keats, me on Thomas, Avaland on Dickinson (which one, Avaland?) P on Jabberwocky (I am so subtle with my pushing here, do you notice?) and Urania is going to do all The Fairy Queens for us.

Anyone else want to commit? One poem a week! you can all do it!

Make poetry part of your life!

Four more lines this morning!

Don't worry, I'm not going to be posting daily tallies.

At some point, I would like to memorize Kubla Khan; since I already know the first five lines! I also used to know Ozymandias, and a lot of others that will probably come back to me (the names, not the poems) because we did memorize poetry in school. It was just a long long time ago.

I can already see, just from 8 lines, that memorizing poetry is giving me much more of a feel for the structure of the poem and for the sounds, as well as the meanings, of the words.

Interestingly, I am finding that I'm applying some of the same techniques I used when I VERY briefly tried to take up piano again as an adult (something I may still come back to, but it requires more time than memorizing poetry). That is, work on a line until I have it right, then work on the next one, then put them together, keep going back to whichever spot causes trouble until I get it right, then try putting them together again.

"You are old Father William", the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white.
And yet you incessantly stand on your head.
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
I feared it might injure the brain,
But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why I do it again and again."

ETA: This thread is bringing to mind poems which I do remember.

haha great! who is that by?

#24 I can already see, just from 8 lines, that memorizing poetry is giving me much more of a feel for the structure of the poem and for the sounds, as well as the meanings, of the words

Yes, I agree. There really is nothing like memorizing for bringing out the depths of a poem. In the Keats poem you are doing, for example, I noticed a real change of style in the octet and the sestet: the octet is very poetic, high diction, and then it suddenly switches to very colloquial everyday diction. Everything in the sestet points eventually to the word 'silent'.

#25, 26

The incomparable Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, also known as Lewis Carroll, in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

I used to know that one by heart, too, Amanda. Thanks for bringing it back.

There is a spectacular book called Annotated Alice which goes through the text and gives the originals off of which LC then did his comic riffs. I love the book.

There really is nothing like memorizing for bringing out the depths of a poem.

The only competitor I see to memorising a poem for understanding it is to read it aloud -- I like to record myself reading 'em for my ipod, though having done it I rarely listen to them. Just half baked memorisation?

edit - I take your point about length, I still feel I'd like to build up to that though. I'll join the challenge - but only after my exams later in't month. I'm encouraged - that NY Times article was goood.

>23 tomcatMurr:: I'll try the "Good Night" from Donne's "Eclogue on the Marriage of the Earl of Somerset".

#26, About the change in tone: I actually noticed it in the last line of the octet, especially its last words: "Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold."

Ooh, memorising poetry!

Well, my favourite poem is this little number by Osip Mandelstam. I am going to quote it (in translation) from memory, and then check subsequently to see whether I've got it right:

Into the distance disappear the mounds of human heads
I dwindle, go unnoticed now
But in affectionate books, in children's games
I shall rise from the dead to say: The Sun!

As a child, I memorised a poem by A.A. Milne which begins thus:

Jonathan Jo has a mouth like an "O"
and a wheelbarrow full of surprises ...

for a school or church concert . I got through it, too, despite my nerves, and have never since had a problem with public speaking. I used to have this one in memory too:

James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree
Took great care of his mother though he was only three
James James said to his mother, "Mother," he said, said he
"You must never go down to the end of the town without consulting me."

An entertaining if slightly sinister tale of incipient patriarchy. The best bit (I'm reaching now) is:

King John put up a notice: "Lost or stolen or strayed.
James James Morrison's mother seems to have been mislaid."

This topic is going to make me dive back into The Boy's Own Reciter.

tim, was that from "Now We Are Six"? I used to love the one about being halfway up the stairs too.

#32: I think it was.

Halfway up the stairs isn't up and isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery, it isn't in the town ...

Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair where I sit
There isn't any other stair
Quite like it

:)

It's not at the bottom and it's not at the top ...

#28 Great Tony! what will you learn first?

#29 Good for you TadAD!!!!

#30 Rebecca, on further internal recitation while strapped to my dentist's chair, I believe you are right.

I love all this AA Milne going back and forth here. I can't remember any of the poetry, but I have vivid pictures of Christopher Robin clutching his teddy bear sitting on the stairs. Who were the illustrations by?

I always felt very attached to Pooh and his gang as I grew up on the borders of Ashdown Forest.

"What would I do," I said to Pooh,
"If it wasn't for you?"
And Pooh said "True.
It's not much fun for one but two
Can play together," said Pooh.
Said he, "It's much more fun with two."

(I don't think that's entirely accurate. Shall check.)

My T.S. Eliot memorisation is going very badly, mainly because I attempt it late at night.
Here goes...
Time past and time present
Are both........in time future...
etc etc
Footfalls echo in the memory...
path not taken....
door not opened.
Rose petals in a bowl something something
etc

Shall try to do better.

Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair where I sit
There isn't any other stair
Quite like it

I'm not at the bottom
I'm not at the top
So this is the stair
Where I always stop

Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up, and isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery, it isn't in the town
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head
It isn't really anywhere
It's somewhere else instead

The illustrations were by Ernest H. Shepard. He also did The Wind in the Willows. His is the real Pooh, not the Disney one.
ETA: sad, really, I can't remember Milton but there is Christopher Robin. Maybe a factor of the age at which we learn things?

I think I have my first poem completely memorized! I'll practice it as I wend my way to and from a meeting I have to go to. Will comment on it more later, and also think about my next poem.

Amanda, I'm working on it first thing in the morning: 4 lines the first day, 4 lines the next day, and 6 today, mainly because I knew some of the 6 already, or I would have stuck with fewer. The advantage (for me) of doing it in the morning is that then I can practice it during the day. Since you are a musician, maybe you can apply some of the techniques for learning music to learning poetry -- I, as a total non-musician, am doing that (see my post #24 above).

Do you carry the correct version in your pocket for a quick check?

Oh, I love Pooh. For some reason it drove my mother crazy that when I was a teenager I posted on my door a quote about being A Bear of Very Little Brain. She objected vociferously, asserting my brain was exceptionally large. While perhaps true, she did miss the point.

And then many many years later my kids and I frequently played poohsticks in our walks through the woods.

P, I played poohsticks on the very bridge in the book, in Coleman's Hatch, Sussex, many times when I was a child.

Tiffin: Shephard! That's the guy. Totally agree with you about the Disney, which I am proud to say, i have never seen. Was that from memory, btw? ;-)

go go go Amanda! (small chorus of cheerleading kittens going on here)

Rebecca: Have you had any more flashes of insight into the poem?

I have the first two stanzas of my Thomas poem, only two more to go. The second bit of the first stanza I found quite hard (I'm not sure what it means, I think is the problem). What the heck is 'a folly's rider'?

How are the others getting on?

Here's a tip: I keep an index of the poems I know in the back of my poem notebook. Occasionally, I glance at the index and recite a poem at random. Keeps everything fresh and lovely.

TCM: almost from memory...had to double check the funny thoughts part.

What are poohsticks?

#42, 43 Too busy at work to post insights, Murr, but will do so later or tomorrow. Have to find nice notebook for poems.

About "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," I can add to what Murr said above about the change in language from the octet to the sestet (starting with the last line of the sestet, "Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold") that the whole energy and focus of the poem changes, propelled by the more direct language. I also noticed that Keats chooses a lot of sight and hearing words -- seen, watcher, eagle eyes, stared, looked, told, heard and then, finally, silent, as he, the poet, experiences the thrill of discovery and has moves beyond words (reading, poetry) to direct action (exploration of the universe/planet). I leave it to others to explain more than this, but I certainly appreciate the poem more now that I've memorized.

This morning, I moved along to another poem that I already knew a little of and that seems easy to memorize, "An Irish Airman Forsees His Death," by Yeats. I eventually would like to memorize longer and more difficult poems that I really like, but I think it will help me to start with easier ones until I get in the habit of memorizing.

Bravo (or brava?) Rebecca...one under your belt already. I would have loved to have Sailing to Byzantium in my head, entire, but nevermore, nevermore.

#47, 44

Ah, Tui,

Thanks for making me laugh with "nevermore, nevermore." I also fear nevermores more and more now. I had dinner with a friend last night and kept losing the names of authors, and he would say "Oh, yeah, that's so-and-so, and I would say, no, it's not but I would not be able to think of the right name till much later...upsetting.

I thought soemone else would jump in with the poohsticks explanation, but since that did not happen: Christopher Robin and Pooh and whoever, would drop sticks into the water on one side of the bridge and then go to the other side to see whose stick comes out first. A wonderful meditative Pooh-style game. My kids and I loved it. And obviously Murr did, too, on the authentic bridge.

Act I, Scene I of Macbeth

I memorized this one as a child. I thought it was wonderful

Setting: three witches and lots of bad weather

Witch 1
When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

Witch 2
When the hurlyburly's done,
When the battle's lost and won.

Witch 3
That will be ere the set of sun.

Witch 1
Where the place?

Witch 2
Upon the heath.

Witch 3
There with Macbeth to meet.

Witch 1
I come, Graymalkin!

Witch 2
Paddock calls.

Witch 3
Anon.

All
Fair is foul, and foul is fair,
Hover through the fog and filthy air.

I think I still know more than half of Macbeth by heart. I love it, love it, love it.

I only know "aroint thee, witch, the rump fed runion cried"

#36 - I'll complete the last poem I started trying to learn - Dylan Thomas' 'A refusal to mourn, the death by fire, of a child in London' then fancy moving onto Marvell and 'To his Coy Mistress' which appeals to get down. this is exciting, hope I am still energised after my exams - maybe I'd just need to revisit this thread to be so.

I'm too late for the poohsticks (my kids loved it, too,) but here's a bit of Milne that I teach to my preschoolers, who all memorize faster than I do. You can imagine them stamping in rhythm and miming appropriate rain gear.

John has
great big
waterproof
boots on,

John has a
great big
waterproof
hat;

John has a
great big
waterproof
Macintosh,

"And that,"
says John,
"Is That."

I've known this for so long that I can't remember if this form of it is right, or whether Milne capitalized the lines. The kids always want to say "John has a great big waterproof hat on."

Most of the poetry I've memorized as an adult has been set to music -- it would be more of a challenge to learn the words alone, I think.

#52, "To His Coy Mistress" is also on my list to memorize when I get up to longer poems, as well as "Easter 1916" by Yeats, "Musée des Beaux Arts" by Auden, "Kubla Khan," and many others.

umm..

The world is charged w/ the grandeur of god.
It will flame out like shining from shook foil.
It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why then now do men not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod have trod.
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil.
And wears man's smudge and bears (shares?) his smell. The soil
is bare now-nor can foot feel being shod.*

Murr's right, something so fine should not be let loose out of mind.

so much for long term memory - i had that one down ~ 20yrs ago and it's gone.

James James, Morrison Morrison,
Weatherbe George Dupree,
Took good care of his mother,
though he was only three.
James James said to his mother,
"Mother" he said, said he,
"You must Never go down to the end of the town
without consulting me."
.....
"Last seen wandering vaguely, quite of her own accord."
primo line.
I do have a lot of first verses from AA Milne present and accounted for.

One of my favorite comfort books is the pocket milne a collection of short pieces he wrote for Punch. His forays into the world of investing in SAfrican gold and becoming a bird expert on the spur of the moment are forever great. Not to mention his disquisition on service techniques in tennis.

*getting the punctuation in mind may well be harder for me than the words themselves.

#46 Well spotted: I missed that!

#47 Tiffin, try try try la! two lines a day to begin with.

#52 Tony, great, that will make two Dylan Thomas fans on this thread! I want to do Marvel's 'To his coy mistress' as well. It's one of the funniest poems in English.

#53 Avidiva, what are you going to do next? some more Milne, or something more adult? Rochester, perhaps?

#55 Bob, redo it. Relearning is very quick and easy. I have three Hopkins poems: that one, Moonrise, and the kingfisher poem. Hopkins is a bugger to memorise, but well worth it.

Urania and P: we should have a Macbeth fest. I have lots of this play as well. I played Banquo in my high school graduation production, which we then took to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

How is everyone else getting on? Amanda, how are the quartets? MAjic, what play are you learning next? TadAD are you Donne? Fullmoonblue, are we going to have some more Parker from you? Marian, let's show everyone that poetry is not declining here! What are you learning? Tim, what are you going to give us next?

I hope that is everyone. Forgive me if I have missed anyone out. I hope every-one is feeling suitably encouraged. Next step: get your family learning!

I have one more stanza of my Thomas to go. It's getting easier, after I stumbled over the first stanza. (Still not sure what that bit means, however.) I'm enjoying these lines: And now the horns of England, in the sound of shape/Summon your snowy horsemen, and the four stringed hill/Over the sea-gut loudens, ... I have noticed that Dylan Thomas is very active always on the metonymic axis: he likes to invert the normal order of words, play around with the normal relationship of causality between words and their corresponding thoughts: the shape of sounds, becomes the sound of shape, for example. He does this a lot. I will be interested to hear what TonyH has to say about Thomas.

I think I will do Jabberwocky next, after hearing P recite it.

Another memory tip:
I have found that the best way to get over stumbling blocks is to forget the meaning and focus on the shapes of the words as they form in my mouth: try to go for a purely physical memory of the poem, using the muscle memory of your organs of articulation and breathing. I think it stays in the long term memory better that way as well.

Don't forget to share any memory tips you discover.

And now here is some Chinese:

Jai yo! Jai yo!

(it means go for it! it's used to encourage others in a task of great difficulty)
So altogether now:

jia yo! jia yo!

54 -- Ah, Yeats! Thanks for reminding me!

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light...

I leave you all for the night with, "Yet do I fear thy nature. It is too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way....The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements."

I can't claim to be knowledgeable about Thomas -- there are a couple of poems I know a little. Lots of his make little sense to me (so far, maybe ever). What you wrote (tomcat) makes a lot of sense to me and I wonder if he wrote for sound alone sometimes. He does structure things strangely at times, one reason I like him. I was in a writing group for a while where I learned an idea that a test for a poem might be if it works when read backwards as well as forwards - it's a test I like a lot - I've not tried it on Thomas, but i bet it would be interesting.

For you, Murr, another something dealing with youth, but more adult in tone. I once knew this cold, but will admit to having checked a couple of lines which had mysteriously gone missing. Maybe now I will have them back again!

A Nativity

Unfold thy face, unmask thy ray,
Shine forth bright sun, double the day,
Let no malignant misty fume
Nor foggy vapour once presume
To interpose thy perfect sight
This day, which lets us love thy light
Forever better, that we could
That blessed object once behold,
Which is both the circumference
And center of all excellence:
Or, rather, neither, but a treasure,
Unconfined without measure,
Whose center and circumference,
Including all preeminence,
Excluding nothing but defect,
and infinite in each respect,
Is equally both here and there,
And now, and then, and everywhere
Is always, one, himself, the same,
A being far above a name.
Draw near, then, and freely pour
Forth all thy light into that hour
Which was crowned with his birth
And made heaven envy earth!

Let not his birthday clouded be,
By whom thou shinest, and we see!

--George Herbert

And what is so rare as a day in June? Perhaps the poetry of Evelyn Waugh.

In Grade 6 we were required to recite a poem in front of class. I chose Similar Cases by Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilmore. I thought it was clever, had some big words, and, at 120 lines, would smother any competition. I was pretty obnoxious at the time, I hope, no longer, or not as much. My takeaway--a bright Neolithic Man predicts the rise of civilization, but is ridiculed by his neighbors since "Before such things can come, / You idiotic child, / You must alter Human Nature!" / And they all sat back and smiled. / The very first Existentialist debate, a connection I would not realize until just now.

I loved the poem regardless and could recite it for years afterwards. At the same time I tried to memorize The Raven and couldn't get past the first stanza. So, I left off with the recitations.

Until now. I am so excited about this thread. One has to exercise one's mind or lose it forever. I plan to start slowly, hoping to complete Step 1 by the end of the weekend--starting with Waugh.

Dennis Barlow, in The Loved One, composes this elegy to Sir Francis Hinsley on The Lake Island (sic) of Innisfree, inspired, no doubt, by Yeats.

They told me, Francis Hinsley,
     they told me you were hung
With red protruding eye-balls
     and black protruding tongue;
I wept as I remembered
     how often you and I
Had laughed about Los Angeles
     and now ’tis here you’ll lie;
Here pickled in formaldehyde
     and painted like a whore,
Shrimp-pink incorruptible,
     not lost nor gone before.

It brought a few tears to my eye, watching the movie, when Robert Morley read these lines, extempore, at the service. To be able to recall them to mind, instanter, what bliss!

"Shrimp-pink incorruptible" - what an image!

How is everyone else getting on?

Well, from memory (I did not memorize punctuation...I declare it not to count):

Now, as in Tullia's tomb one lamp burnt clear,
Unchanged for fifteen hundred year,
May these love-lamps we here enshrine,
In warmth, light, lasting, equal the divine,
Fire ever doth aspire,
And makes all like itself, turns all to fire,
But ends in ashes, which these cannot do,
For none of these is fuel, but fire too,
This is joy's bonfire, then, where love's strong arts,
Make of so noble individual parts,
One fire of four inflaming eyes, and of two loving hearts.

#Memory Tip: Stick two lines on your fridge, or perhaps on your office desk. You will memorise them in one day. Add two more lines the following day.

I love this thread. I sat up a few nights ago reciting Hillaire Belloc poems in my head:

George
(Who suffered a catastrophe of considerable dimensions.)

When George's Grandmama was told
That George had been as good as gold
She promised, in the afternoon,
To buy him an immense balloon.
And so she did but when it came
It got into the candle flame
And being of a dangerous sort
Exploded with a loud report.
The lights went out, the windows broke
The room was filled with reeking smoke
And in the darkness screams and yells
Were mingled with electric bells
etc.

i'm slowly getting God's Grandeur back - though i keep misplacing Hopkin's adjectives.

It probably happened to Hopkins himself, Bob.

ahh -- I've jumped into this discussion late, but I must join in. So many poems I love have been mentioned from "To His Coy Mistress" to the Atwood to "Jabberwocky" and Hopkins and Yeats. I have lots of nursery rhymes in my head --

I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one,
but in any case,
I'd rather see than be one"

and lots of snatches from poems that I teach in class -- Shakespeare's sonnets, "Easter 1916," "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night," etc.

"When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her though I know she lies
To think me some untutored youth
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties"

I think I'll start with sonnets -- finish learning that one and Yeats' "Leda and the Swan" and Millay's "What lips my lips have kissed"

Oh yes, have to remember Millay!

I finished 'An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" -- what struck me on memorizing it was how the lines:

A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds

stand out from everything else in the the poem -- in terms of language, structure, meaning, everything.

I've started one of Houseman's from A Shropshire Lad, the one that starts "Along the fields as we came by," but I think I'm warming up to some longer and unrhymed poems, which I will certainly find more difficult to memorize.

As for the purple cow (#68), I learned the last two lines as

But this I'll tell you anyhow
I'd rather see than be one

#66 Bob, look under the sofa. That's where I usually find my proctologist.

> 69 --rebeccanyc -- your memory scans much better than mine -- I probably learned a corrupted version. Ah, well...

I learned, "But I can tell you anyhow...." I suppose we're all corrupted a bit.

aviddiva, You win the prize. I looked it up, and it is exactly that, "But I can tell you anyhow." But I can tell you anyhow I'm going to stick with my version!

#60, Tony, that is an interesting heuristic tool. I will try it with Thomas. Let us know how you get on with the "Refusal to mourn..." I haven't got that one by heart, but I completed my Thomas poem yesterday, bringing my Thomas repertoire to 13 poems. OMG unlucky number! I must learn one more immediately!

#61 Avvidiva, that's great! Not a huge fan of Herbert, but it's a good one to get by heart. What are you doing next?

#62 Wilf, great to see you here as well! That Waugh poem you posted was hilarious! So you going to try the Raven again?

#64 TadAD Don't worry about punctuation. I couldn't even swear to the accuracy of some of my line breaks. Auden defined poetry as 'memorable speech', and I think that's right. I always focus on how the poem sounds in my head and how it feels in my mouth rather than trying to reproduce an image of it on the page. But I guess everyone's memories work differently.

#65 Amanda: I love that one! It reminds be of the scene in Dylan Thomas's A child's Christmas in Wales, when the house burns down, and the firemen come, and grandmother stands at the top of the burnt stairs with a book in each hand from her library and says to the firemen in their shiny helmets and dripping hoses: would you like something to read?
How are the Four Quartets coming along? Thanks for the good memory tip.

#66 Bob, if you having trouble with the adjective order, which is something that gets me with Hopkins every time, try looking for an alphabetical order. It's a strange fact that often words in poems are arranged on an alphabetical order of first letter. I humbly post this link to a blog post on this phenomenon.

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2008/03/fragment-309.html

I'm sure we'll all be very interested to hear what insights you have gained into the poem by memorizing it.

#68 Janejones welcome to the party! So you're doing one Shax sonnet, Yeats and Millay, right? Great! So far the hardest Shax sonnet I've done is number 66. And remembering the numbers is a bugger too!

#69 Rebecca, so you've finished Keats and Yeats already? Wow! you go girl! I think it might have something to do with all those light and dark 'l's in the couplet you quoted?

I absolutely adore Houseman and have many of his poems, especially the ones set to music by Butterworth in the song cycle: "A Shropshire Lad". He has a sly sense of humour:

Malt does more than Milton can
to justify the works of God to man.

Any thoughts on what you want to do for your long unrhymed poem? looking for suggestions?

It's going to be Jabberwocky for me next week. I had a Dylan Thomas fest last night and recited all the poems from him I know. Felt kind of dizzy afterwards, as he requires a lot of breath. Good for the lungs.

Don't forget to share your memory tips, everyone!

Hold hard my country darlings!

Murr, I don't know Butterworth's setting of A Shropshire Lad, but I like the ones by Vaughan Williams. I'll have to look the other up. Do you have a performer you particularly recommend? Jabberwocky is fun to learn -- it has such toothsome language in it!

My husband, a former actor, suggests it is easiest to start at the end when memorizing something. If you start with the last two lines, then the last four lines, then the last 6 etc., you are always proceeding towards the most familiar instead of away from it.

#74 Just occurrred to me -- my backwards didn't mean word by word backwards but line by line -- word by word would just be sillly (wouldn't it?)

#75 I like that tip -- I get kind of anxious to get to the end usually, another reason to keep thos eI try short, this might help.

Tony, thank god you made that clear. I have been trying to do word for word backwards and I thought I was losing my mind! Lol

Avidiva, the Butterworth is one of the great unknown masterpieces of ENglish/European music. Eleven Songs from a Shropshire Lad (I think the touchstone won't even have it, though I have been trying) for voice and piano by George Butterworth. The piano writing is exquisite, the melodies are based on a folk song idiom, but are distinctly modernist, and the setting of the words shows deep understanding of them. The opening setting alone, of: Loveliest of trees, is as good as Schubert at his very best.
I know of no really good recordings of it. I know it from my days as a singer when I used to perform it at musical gatherings among friends. I keep hoping and praying that the divine Ian Bostridge will do it, but even he (or his record producers) seem not to have thought of it. it would fit his voice and temprament beautifully. (I have given up trying to spell that word correctly -so much for my memory lol)

Butterworth was killed by a sniper in the battle of the Somme, a huge tragic loss to music. If you can find a recording of 'the Shropshire lad' snap it up.

Right. T'was brillig.....!!!!!

#74, Murr, It is the sound of the l's, but it is also that those lines just soar away from the balance, for lack of a better word, of all the other lines.

And yes, I love, "Malt does more than Milton can/to justify God's ways to man," and the mercenaries who "saved the sum of things for pay.

Will look for the Butterworth.

May not go completely unrhymed first, but will eventually aim for poems where the rhyming and meter aren't quite as helpful as in the ones I'm starting off with or are just plain long, e.g., "Kubla Khan," "Easter 1916."

But there will be so much to choose from . . .

My husband called me from the airport to let me know (so that I could let you all know) that tomorrow's "On Point" show on Boston's WBUR (NPR) will be spending the second of their two hours discussing memorizing poetry (thus, 11 - noon. It also repeats in the evening). I don't see anything on the website yet, but others should be able to listen to the show via the web.

http://www.onpointradio.org/

I memorized Hymn by A.R. Ammons for a poetry writing class. Although I haven't responded in the same way to others of his poems, that one is wonderful, and I thought I would start out by relearning it. Then I want to pick out one by Linda Gregg whose poetry I think is incredibly strong, so that I can't recall one that I haven't responded to - and I own several of her books. I'll decide which one later.

I found a link to Hymn, http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/A.R._Ammons/2931

Welcome to the thread Solla. I like the Ammon you posted. It's a good idea to start with something you half know. I look forward to seeing a Linda Gregg, of whom I have never heard.

Did anybody listen to the link avaland posted? I am such a luddite, I cannot get it to work. (I learn poetry because I cannot get an ipod to work normally) Perhaps it's not up yet, or something. If anyone does listen to it, can they post an easy to use link? I would be interested to hear what they talk about. Thanks avaland and hubby for alerting us to it.

So how are we all getting on with our poems this week? I'm doing jabberwocky. My vorpal blade is sharp!

This seems to be the place:

wbur - On Point

I haven't had a chance to read/listen to it all, but I was struck by one of the comments because it mentioned a poem that my father used to tell me, although I remember it slightly differently. Not great literature, but a sentimental favorite.

The wise old owl lived in the oak
The more he saw, the less he spoke
The less he spoke, the more he heard
Why can't we all be like that wise old bird!

In the meantime, I have memorized the first section of the Houseman (see #69) and am starting on the second.

#84 One of my primary school teachers wrote that poem out for me. I think there was a message in there somewhere.

Have memorised 10 lines of Burnt Norton and that has motivated me to continue.

Ok, I think that I have Hymn by Ammons down again. I am moving onto

Fish, Tea, Rice by Linda Gregg. I realized as I was typing it out that a challenge will be that there are not verse breaks. This is true of most of her poems. Part of why I want to memorize is to get a feel of what structure there is. Here it is:

Fish, Tea, Rice
by Linda Gregg

It is on the Earth that all things transpire,
and only on the Earth. On it, up out of it,
down into it. Wading and stepping, pulling
and lifting. The heft in the seasons.
Knowledge in the bare ankle under water
amid the rows of rice seedlings. The dialogue
of the silent back and forth, the people moving
together in flat fields of water with the patina
of the sky upon it, the green shoots rising up
from the mud, sticking up seamlessly above the water.
The water buffalo stepping through as they work,
carrying the weight of their bodies along the rows.
The wrists of the people wet under the water,
planting or pulling up. It is this Earth that all
meaning is. If love unfolds, it unfolds here.
Here where Heaven shows its face. Christ's agony
flowers into grace, spikes through the hands
holding the body in place, arms reaching wide.
It breaks our heart on Earth. Ignorance mixed
with longing, intelligence mixed with hunger.
The genius of night and sleep, being awake
and at work. The sacred in the planting, the wading
in mud. Eating what is here. Fish, bread, tea, rice.

good! let us know what secrets you discover about the structure.

amanda, anything to share about Burnt Norton?

I have completed japperwocky and am now choosing three shakespeare sonnets to learn.

I am puzzled by the word 'gyre' in the second line of the first stanza of Jabberwocky. This is the word Yeats uses to describe his idiosyncratic notion of history: 'turning and turning in the widening gyre', and 'pyrne in a gyre'. my OED tells me this word dates from 1566 and means spiral. I thought most of the words in Japperwocky were deliberately nonsense, but it appears that some of them are not. 'Chortle', which is common now was invented by Carroll,according to the OED, 'burbling' comes from 1577. Its' all very interesting. I love some of the words, particular 'slithy toves', which sounds like a jolly useful thing to hurl at someone as an insult: 'You slithy tove!"

I will give this more uffish thought.

#87 Not yet.

My son (10) came home with an assignment to memorize a poem over spring break. He wanted to do one by Shel Silverstein, but when his teacher turned that down (apparently Siverstein is being reserved for the fourth graders) he chose Jabberwocky. So we are deep in uffish thought here in California.

I am going to start learning Plaint of the Poet in a Ignorant Age by Dorothy Carolyn Kizer. I'll let you know how I progress.

I am stuck on one line of the Houseman poem I'm memorizing; I've been trying to get it down for a day now. The line is "And I spell nothing in their stir" Aargh! Maybe writing this down here will help me remember.

#89

avid (The Magnificent Riddle Solver),

the title of your poem sounds terrific and I do not know Dorothy Kizer and the local library does not have her. I tried to find the poem online without success. I know we are supposed to be protective of copyright, but if posting the poem here is inappropriate, would you be willing to send it to me as a PM?

Polutropos, you might find her more easily if I had typed her name correctly -- the poet is not "Dorothy" Kizer (don't know where I got that from), but Carolyn Kizer, who won the Pulitzer prize for poetry in 1985. She is certainly findable on the internet, and may even be in your library.

>11 urania1: Urania, if Hiawatha seems like more than you want to tackle, you might try Kizer's Mud Soup, which begins

Had the ham bone, had the lentils,
Got to meat store for the salt pork,
Got to grocery for the celery.
Had the onions, had the garlic,
Borrowed carrots from the neighbor.
Had the spices, had the parsley.
One big kettle I had not got;
Borrowed pot and lid from landlord....

My son and I were chuckling over it tonight.

I hadn't thought about copyright being a problem, but so many other poems are posted in various threads that I will post it here, polutropus. If others think this creates copyright issues, tell me and I can take it down again.

Plaint of the Poet in an Ignorant Age
by Carolyn Kizer

I would I had a flower-boy!
I'd sit in the mid of an untamed wood
Away from the tame suburbs beyond the trees.
With my botany-boy to fetch and find,
I'd sit in a rocker by a pot of cold coffee
Noodling in a notebook on my knee,
Calling, "Flower-boy, name me that flower!
Read me the tag on that tree!"
But here I sit by an unlit fire
Swizzling three martinis
While a thousand metaphors doze outdoors,
And the no-bird sits in the no-name tree.

I would I had a bug-boy
With a bug-book and a butterfly-net,
To bring me Nature in a basket of leaves:
A bug on the leaf by the goldfish bowl;
I'd sit in a rocker, a pocketful of pine-nuts
And a nutcracker knocking on my knee,
Cracking nuts, jokes, and crying to my bug-boy,
"Read me the caterpillar on the leaf,
Count the number of nibbled veins
By a tree's light, in fire!"
While I, in my rocker, rolled and called,
A caterpillar crawled on the long-named leaf.

If I had a boy of Latin and Greek
In love with eleven-syllable leaves,
Hanging names like haloes on herb and shrub!
A footnote lad, a lexicon boy
Who would run in a wreath around my rocker
To kneel at my chair, at my knee
Saying, "Here is your notebook, here is your pen!--
I have found you a marvellous tree!"
But all I have is a poetry-boy,
A bottle-cap king: he cries,
Thudding from the garden, "What do you call
The no-bird that sings in the no-name tree?"

How is everyone doing with their poetry memorization? Amanda? Murr? Jane? Others?

After getting stuck for a while with the Houseman "Along the field as we came by," I've finally finished it. I don't know if I gained any great insight that I didn't already have, but I was certainly struck by how many lines began with "And." If anything, I think I like this poem a little less after memorizing it, but I may feel better about it once I'm not obsessing about the lines I couldn't seem to get.

Yesterday, I toyed with making my next poem "Paul Revere's Ride" by Longfellow ("Twas the 18th of April in '75"), but after reading it I realized not only that is it very long but also that I pretty much know the best parts of it by heart anyway.

So I think I'm going to start "To His Coy Mistress," a favorite since I read it many years ago in school.

I wrote a long post on Friday encouraging everybody and commenting on the Kizer in 92, which I like a lot. Then, just as i pressed submit, LT went down, and the post was lost for all eternity, and I had no time to rewrite it. I hate it when that happens! Grrrrr.

Anyway, I have not had time for much memorization last week, as I am drowning in a morass of Russian Philosophy, which is taking up a lot of my thinking time. However, I have chosen two shakespeare sonnets for this week: #57 and 58, which form a nice pair. I have been reciting JAbberwocky at every opportunity, and my liking for it is growing all the time.

Rebecca, it's interesting that you say you don't much like the Houseman after learning it. I have often found with some poems, that learning them reveals their shallowness or their mere euphoniousness, and turns me off them. Memorization is in that sense a very ruthless examiner of a poem's worth.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts on To his Coy Mistress. I find it very arch and funny.

Murr,

like you I sometimes hate technology, especially in situations when I devote some time and thought to something and then technology loses it.

I would love to see your thoughts on the Kizer in #92. I like it, too. I am not sure I want to memorize it, but I would love to talk about it.

Jabberwocky is one of my all-time favourites. I think I know it, but will spend some time this week refreshing my memory.

My daughter is becoming a Milton specialist and is urging me to memorize Milton. I just don't know where to start and whether I am up to it. Thoughts, anyone?

Andrushka, my beamish boy!
Yes! I love Milton with a passion! He's very challenging to learn but so rewarding. He pummels and stretches the syntax of the language, and therefore the memory.
Here are some selections from Paradise Lost:

First 26 lines of Book one, especially lines 12 to 26
book 4 l. 73 - 83
book 4 l. 598- 609
book 9 l. 115-130

it's also full of great couplets and throwaway stuff that my memory just doesn't retain very well.

The Kizer poem, without a deep forensic reconstruction of my 2000 word essay lost for eternity (thanks a bunch Tim lol), I would say that it reminds me of the theme of Eliot's Gerontion, which is one of the latest poems of Eliot I like. I like the way it links words and butterflies and flowers as an image, and the whimsical way it poses questions about naming (and therefore seeing) the world.

And we should all be so lucky to have an eager poetry boy who can open bottles.

I'm finding this much harder than I thought -- I'm 1/2 way through Shakespeare's sonnet 138, but keep getting stuck on "On both sides thus is simple truth suppres'd"

I'm blaming my difficulties on house guests on and a rapidly aging memory -- though my actor husband has managed to learn 4 plays this year -- but he doesn't go in and teach undergraduates 5 days a week.

I shall persevere -- but more slowly than I originally thought.

#96 Murr,

I just looked at my Milton.

"What in me is dark illumine, what is low raise and support"

is not bad. LOL

Do I dare say, without being stoned, that I still prefer Homer and Vergil?

Aha I have slewn my Jabberwock with my vorpal blade! and now the exams are over for a while can lay down my pen - least I hope they are -- and can get this memorisation of more important things than exam answers going --wondered if I felt less enthused but have reread the thread and picked it up again. Starting with the Thomas today then roll onto my coy mistress (as it were).

I wanna join!! OK, I'm going to have a think today and get back to you on what I am going to learn but I'm thinking the nicest thing to start with might be "Daffodils" by Wordsworth, as I loved it as a little girl.

The sun has come out. The world is lithe, lightsome, and lovely. The weatherperson predicts a plethora of dizzy, golden, dancing days ahead. I am heading for the garden feeling quite Herrickish (if Herrickish is the word I seek), so here goes:

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes!

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free,
—O how that glittering taketh me!

I love the phrase "the liquefaction of her clothes."

And of course there is always cummings at his most divine (as opposed to his most sacherine):

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

Urania, that is a lovely phrase, indeed. Herrick is a wonderful poet, and I can imagine you in your silks, liquefying in the sun like butter. Here in earthquake country, liquefaction has a more disturbing meaning, but still, perhaps, appropriate.

The cummings is one of my favorites of his. Around here we don't have balloon-men, but the ice cream truck whistles far and wee...

oh that cummings is kind of sinister....

I have learnt my sonnet 57 but I'm damned if I can get the couplet right....

Well, I have got Fish, Tea, Rice (see 86) by Linda Gregg down. It is true, memorizing and saying it aloud does help with the sense of structure. Of course, all the -ings are rather obvious, and the this and that (as in "Wading and stepping, pulling and lifting) but I just noticed the internal rhymes of the 3 lines that start with: Here where Heaven shows its face..

I think some of it works by setting up a pattern and then moving out of it for a phrase so that you really feel that.

Anyway, I think next is Great Night by Rilke, a poem I've always loved. This is the version in Modern European Poetry

Great Night

Often I would stand and stare from the window begun yesterday,
stand there and stare at you. As yet the new city
felt as if barred to me, and the unpersuaded country
slid into darkness as though I didn't exist. Nor would
the nearest things reveal their meaning to me. By the lantern
the alley rose up: alien my eyes said it was.
Across, a room accessible to response, luminous in the lamplight-
I was already among them: they sensed it, closed the shutters.
Stood there. and then a child cried. And I knew of the mothers
in the houses round about, what they could do, and knew
together with all the weeping the causes beyond comfort.
Or a voice was singing, extending some distance
past expection, or from below an old man's cough
full of reproach as if his body were in the right
against a world more gentle. Then the hour struck-
but I counted too late, it passed me by.
As a boy, an outsider, when finally allowed to join in,
one doesn't after all catch the ball and knows none of the games
which the others are playing among themselves with such ease
stands there, looking away-where?-so stood I, and suddenly
it was you, I realized, accompanying, playing with me, adult
night, and I stared at you. Where the towers were
shaking with anger, where with averted destiny
a city was hemming me in and mountains that couldn't be guessed at
were lying athwart my path, and where, closing in,
a starved strangeness encircled the haphazard flickerings
of my feelings: there was, exalted one,
no shame in it for you to know me. Your breath
swept over me; your smile dispersed among
farflung gravities became lodged in me
(translated by E.M. Valk>

#102 - I am not a great ee cummings fan, but that particular one I read awhile back and really enjoyed.

Solla, I love that Rilke. The translation is really excellent. how are we all getting on with our poems?

I confess I have been very slow these last two weeks, with learning new ones. I have learn sonnet 57 and hope to complete 58 by the end of the week. I usually learn much faster, but I have been mired in a debate between the Slavophiles and the Westernisers, whcih is taking up a lot of my thinking time.

All is not lost however, as I have been refreshing my memory with recitations of things I have already learnt.

I'm going slowly, too, as real life intrudes a lot these days, but I have the first stanza of the Kizer poem almost down. I wish I did have a flower-boy (and a laundry-boy, and a homework-boy, and a library-boy to name the no-name books I've forgotten... )

Oh thanks for reminding me! I went back to read it again, and I like it even more!

I am going slowly too, but am really enjoying memorizing one of my long-time favorites, "To His Coy Mistress," Although I studied it in school, that was a LONG time ago, and I'm having fun rediscovering how clever the poem is. I've made it through the first stanza, and I guess I should speed up since "Time's winged chariot is hurrying near"!

One question somebody may be able to answer is about the couplets that don't quite rhyme, e.g., "I would"/"the flood" and "before us lie"/"Eternity". Are these intentional half-rhymes or were some words pronounced differently then so they did rhyme?

Britain may have its first female poet laureate: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/apr/30/poet-laureate-carol-ann-duffy

#106 Rilke's Great Night

I wanted to see another copy of the poem because I wanted to check the word "expection" in line 13, thinking it is probably "expectation" but wanting to make sure.

Lo and behold I found another translation of the poem, quite different:

Rainer Maria Rilke - The Great Night
I'd often stand at the window started the day before,
stand and stare at you. It all seemed to warn me off,
the strange city, whose unconfiding landscape
gloomed as though I didn't exist. The nearest
things didn't mind if I misunderstood them. The street
would thrust itself up to the lamp, and I'd see it was strange.
A sympathisable room up there, revealed in the lamplight:
I'd begin to share: they'd notice, and close the shutters.
I'd stand. Then a child would cry, and I'd know the mothers
in the houses, what they availed, and I'd know as well
the inconsolable grounds of infinite crying.
Or else a voice would sing, and what was expected
be just a little surpassed; or an old man coughed below,
full of reproach, as if his body were in the right
against a gentler world. Or else, when an hour was striking,
I'd begin to count too late and let it escape me.
As a strangle little boy, when at last they invite him to join them,
cannot catch the ball, and is quite unable
to share the game the rest are so easily playing,
but stands and gazes - whither? - I'd stand, and, all at once,
realize you were being friends with me, playing with me, grown-up
Night, and I'd gaze at you. While towers
were raging, and while, with its hidden fate,
a city stood round me, and undivinable mountains
camped against me, and Strangeness, in narrowing circles,
hungrily prowled round my casual flares of perception:
then, lofty Night,
you were not ashamed to recognize me. Your breathing
went over me; your smile upon all that spacious
consequence passed into me.

The translator is not named; it comes from the Art of Europe site.

I just LOVE comparing translations these days.

Rebecca, these are called para-rhymes, or half rhymes as you say. They allow the poet a bit more flexibility in the rhyme scheme. They are quite intentional and do not reflect changes in pronunciation.

The Vast Night

Often I gazed at you in wonder: Stood at the window begun
the day before, stood and gazed at you in wonder. As yet
the new city seemed forbidden to me, and the strange
unpersuadable landscape darkened as though
I didn't exist. Even the nearest things
didn't care whether I understood them. The street
thrust itself up to the lampost: I saw it was foreign.
Over there -a room, feelable, clear in the lamplight-,
I already took part; they notices and closed the shutters.
Stood. Then a child began crying. I knew what the mothers
qll around, in the houses, were capable of-, and knew
the inconsolable orgins of all tears.
Or a womans voice sang and reached a little beyond
expectation, or downstairs an old man let out
a cough that was ful of reproach, as though his body were right
and the gentlerworld mistaken. And then the hour
struck-, but I conted it too late, it tumbled on past me.-
Like a new boy at school, who is finally allowed to join in but he cna't catch the ball, is helpless at all the games
the others pursue with such ease, and he stands ther staring
into the distance, -where?- I sttod there and suddenly
grasped that it was you: You were playing with me, grown-up
Night, and I gazed at you in wonder. Where the towers
were raging, where with averted fate
the city surrounded me, and indecipherable mountains
camped against me, and strangeness in narrowing circles
prowled around my randomly flickering emotions-:
it was then that in all your magnificence
you were not ashamed to know me. Your breath moved tenderly
over my face. And spread across solemn distances
your smile entered my heart.

Stephen Mitchell trans.

(Shades of Prufrock in this version I think.

Thanks, Murr. It never mattered much when I was just reading poetry but now that I'm memorizing I need to know what to do!

This was the Knopf final poem for April/poetry month, received this morning by email:

Written Late at Night
by Janusz Szuber

Almost all day I sat at the table
And, swapping two pens, wrote letters.
One of them, as a joke, was in gothic script.
I tried to be honest, avoid untruth
As far as the truth about myself and events
In their general contour was accessible to me.
Then a few longer phone conversations
And a short break to read eight poems by Cavafy.
How great! Superb! Who can write like that about desire and love,
Admitting that when they burn out
And the bitter tasting of the body is taken away,
They guide the poet’s hand. In them and only in them
All future incantations.

(Translation by Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough)

Nice one, Tiffin!

113 - Yes, it is expectation. I couldn't find this version online and had to resort to typing/mistyping it, from my paperback, Modern European Poetry, a bit difficult to hold and type at once. I did see the translation you found, or one that was similar, but I liked the other one better. I do enjoy seeing more than one translation, and looking at the original too, although my German - reading only - is rather elementary.

Well, it's been awhile, but I finally managed to recite to myself Great Night by Rilke. What is frustrating to me is that they don't stay in my brain the way, for instance, Patrick Henry's speech, "Gentlemen may cry peace, peace, but there is no peace,.." etc., ends with "Give me liberty or give me death. That I can still reel off. Well, it is pretty short, but I try to get to a point where a poem is as automatic as that, so it really won't go away, and I haven't achieved.

Fortunately, the benefit of doing it, happens nonetheless.

Anyway, next I think I will learn three poems about Grandmothers. All are sestinas, which is a kind of obsessive format. The same six words are used to end lines throughout the poem of six stanzas. Then there is another three line stanzas that use 3 of the words at the end, and the other three somewhere in the middle. What is cool about the form is the surprises that occur in trying to come up with the format.

The poems:

Sestina
Elizabeth Bishop

September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.

-------------------------
nani

Sitting at her table, she serves
the sopa de arroz to me
instinctively, and I watch her,
the absolute mamá, and eat words
I might have had to say more
out of embarrassment. To speak,

now-foreign words I used to speak,
too, dribble down her mouth as she serves
me albóndigas. No more
than a third are easy to me.
By the stove she does something with words
and looks at me only with her

back. I am full. I tell her
I taste the mint, and watch her speak
smiles at the stove. All my words
make her smile. Nani never serves
herself, she only watches me
with her skin, her hair. I ask for more.

I watch the mamá warming more
tortillas for me. I watch her
fingers in the flame for me.
Near her mouth, I see a wrinkle speak
of a man whose body serves
the ants like she serves me, then more words

from more wrinkles about children, words
about this and that, flowing more
easily from these other mouths. Each serves
as a tremendous string around her,
holding her together. They speak
Nani was this and that to me

and I wonder just how much of me
will die with her, what were the words
I could have been, was. Her insides speak
through a hundred wrinkles, now, more
than she can bear, steel around her,
shouting, then, What is this thing she serves?

She asks me if I want more.
I own no words to stop her.
Even before I speak, she serves.

—Alberto Rios

-----------------
The third is by me, written after reading Rios. It seems I should have at least memorized my own poems, but I haven't except for one or two very short ones:

Grandmother

A short stolid woman, brown from farm work, though now only a kitchen
garden on this new property, on the phone line, so their children could be sure
they were okay, to know, you know, they hadn’t died
out there all alone, where you can see the naked stars at night
and live so much in silence that at times it all goes still
a single sound stretched thin and strange, impossible to place.

She barely spoke, things more words than words in that place,
fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, fried potatoes, eggs over-hard on the kitchen
table with the oilcloth cover, milk from the milk cow she kept still.
But each visit, sometime, the two of us alone, there was one story she was sure
to tell, how I was born, not on her birthday, but the next night,
me, her birthday present – just a day late. Her delight never died.

She barely spoke. Nor my grandfather, nor my father, nor those who died
before them. I come from these silent people, from a place
where use counts more than talk. Weather, crops, day, night,
family, what persists. The relatives gathering in the kitchen
round the woodstove for our visit of two thousand miles. Someone sure
to crack a joke – funny or not – there’d be laughter still.

She barely spoke, but once while my father and I sat so still
across from her at the table in the dark, and listened while the fire died
in the woodstove, her voice came out so clear and sure
as she spoke a chant of people and names as if to build her world in place,
solid as my father’s elbows on the oilcloth of the kitchen
table, clear as the light from the woodstove spilt across night.

More words than I’d ever heard her say, she said, that night.
She told of relatives, of friends, of children of friends, and still
more: children of children; who married; who left school; the kitchen
filled with her litany of new ones born, of some who died,
of those who stayed, and ones who left for another place.
Some I knew, most not, others I wasn’t sure.

She never faltered, she held me sure
as the day of my birth, safe in the night
whether I came or went, this chant my place,
part of her litany, in the still
center of her that lived as embers died
and we waited in the dark kitchen.

That would be my place and I felt safe and sure
there in the warm kitchen wrapped in night.
I would be there still, except she died.

Solla, those are lovely, especially yours -- very moving.

I have been less diligent about learning a few lines a day than when I started this effort to memorize poetry again, but I have finally finished "To His Coy Mistress." This has been one of my favorite poems ever since we read it in high school, and I like it even more now that I've memorized it. It is also the longest poem I've memorized so far, so I'm proud of myself.

Not sure what will be next. I'm going to be on airplanes and in airports a lot over the Memorial Day weekend, and this strikes me as good poetry-memorizing time, so I may aim for something else that's long.

#120

Solla, I am thrilled by these. Thank you. I will spend some time pondering and digesting, but I wanted immediately to express gratitude.

121, 122 - Glad to hear from you. I was beginning to think everyone had been overwhelmed by other things. I'll be energized now to get on with memorizing these three.

Rebacca, congratulations on finishing To His Coy Mistress.

Thank you, solla. Inspired by my ability to memorize a long poem, I am taking Kubla Khan on my trip.

Beautiful poems solla.

Solla, I thoroughly enjoyed your poem. I could see her.

Oy! Kubla Khan! That IS ambitious! But go for it, Rebecca. Even if you just get part of it, it will be wonderful.

Thanks for stopping by our almost dormant thread and for posting your essay, which I look forward to reading when I have a little more time. I haven't read Hopkins in some time, but I enjoy his work.

I haven't been as gung ho as I was back in April when I started memorizing poetry, but I've been working on and off on "Kubla Kahn." It's by far the longest poem I've attempted, and has some tricky sections, but of all the poems I've memorized so far it is the one which is proving the most interesting to memorize as I'm discovering much about the poem and Coleridge's writing this way.

Yes, I was happy to see a post as well. I have been very slow in memorizing my poems - but somewhat better in working on my novel - hope to get back to the poems as well. A week of vacation may help, although my goal is to finish the first draft of my novel.

umm thinking of "Kubla Khan" - there's a good bit of background medical/scientific information embedded in re "the rime of the ancient mariner" that's discussed in the age of wonder which i certainly didn't catch when i read to poem ages ago - so i'll read it again, soon.

I"m happy to report that after many stops and starts I've finished "Kubla Khan." What a wonderful poem! I so enjoyed being amazed by Coleridge's use of language as I memorized it.

Way to go, Rebecca

I am reviving this thread because some other people here on LT have expressed interest in memorizing poetry. Tell us about it here!

Going back to my earlier post, I have to say "Kubla Khan" is so far my favorite memorization project. Since then I've memorized "Musée des Beaux Arts" and have just started "Dover Beach."

Like a lot of people here I learned loads of poetry in my youth and teens but it disappeared somewhere along the way. The Owl and the Pussycat, though, will stay with me forever.

Oh, and this one -

Jenny kissed me when we met
Jumping from the chair she sat in.
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary; say I'm sad;
Say that health and wealth have missed me;
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kissed me.

(by Leigh Hunt)