Memorizing Poetry

I am in a poetry class this quarter, which I may or may not have mentioned already, and one of our assignments was to memorize a poem. When I first heard about this assignment, I freaked out, to say the least. I am so awful at memorizing things and with memorizing a poem comes recitation... So, I had to memorize stuff and recite it in front of 20 some students and my professor. You can just imagine how excited I was about that...

I searched and searched online for something short and understandable (it had to be 14 lines minimum) and I remembered hearing a lot about Emily Dickinson so as a last ditch effort, I looked her up and found this poem that I ended up choosing to memorize:

There is another sky,

Ever serene and fair,

And there is another sunshine,

Though it be darkness there;

Never mind faded forests, Austin,

Never mind silent fields--

Here is a little forest,

Whose leaf is ever green;

Here is a brighter garden,

Where not a frost has been;

In its unfading flowers

I hear the bright bee hum:

Prithee, my brother,

Into my garden come!

Fun side note: It is three days after my recitation and I wrote this on here without looking at the poem (:

Now at first I just liked the poem because I like gardens and this poem referenced gardens so I thought.. Why not? Not only am I horrible at memorizing stuff, but I'm horrible at understanding poetry as well. I had a hard time understanding this one but through hours of searching the internet, I finally found a wonderful explanation that I actually agreed with after analyzing the poem myself (Click here to read the full analysis by Linda Sue Grimes). Basically she says that Emily Dickinson is calling out to her brother, Austin, to come into her everlasting world of poetry she has created. She feels safe in this world and she just wants Austin to experience it by reading it. I think Emily Dickinson does a wonderful job hiding this meaning within this beautiful metaphor.

So, a big part of Polish culture is literature and since I had the great pleasure of attending Polish school for about 12 years, I was able to take part in a wonderful yet arduous tradition of memorizing famous poems. Poems such as Adam Mickiewicz’s epic poem, Pan Tadeusz, or Jan Brzechwa’s silly and melodic children’s poems stuck with me throughout the years. I was certainly not a newcomer to memorizing poetry but I remember being very anxious when reciting Polish poems in front of classmates or the whole Polish school because Polish words, especially in poetry, are particularly hard to pronounce. Also, along with memorizing poetry for school, being a Catholic and attending Polish school, memorizing prayers was a must. 

I don’t remember ever needing to memorize anything for normal, American school; however, as I got older, public speaking tended to be important and memorizing presentations became a priority. My lack of practice with memorizing things in English caught up with me and I freeze whenever I must speak in front of anyone.

To help with memorizing the poem, I broke it into seven sections of two, essentially seven couplets, and decided to attack it couplet by couplet. Eventually, I had the first four lines and the last two memorized perfectly and only struggled with the middle eight lines. I came up with an interesting way to memorize the middle, which included a mnemonic sort of device; since the poem repeats a few words, I came up with a pattern and used it to aid me in memorizing the order of the words. For example, the fifth and sixth lines start with the words “never mind” and the seventh and ninth lines start with the word “here” and also, the twelfth line has the word “hear” which sounds like “here,” so I used that to my advantage as well. Using my technique, I had the poem memorized by the end of the day. Another technique that proved helpful for me was actually visualizing the poem, especially since the poem I chose was very vivid.

The memorization wasn’t as treacherous and time consuming as I thought it would be, and if my memory was better I would certainly consider memorizing more poems. 

Through memorizing this poem, I noticed the beauty in poetry and it gave me a change to read into a poem more than I ever would just glancing at it for class. It gave me a new appreciation for the complexity of poems and the talents of poets. Even though this process of memorizing and reciting is not something people would look forward to, I believe every class should require something of this sort. Since I have horrible memory, I feel like this activity almost helped me with my memory. Also, I think it's really cool that I have something stored in my head that I can recite if asked to. I definitely feel proud of myself and I didn't mess up when i recited it, even though I was so paranoid that I did. 

Memorize stuff! Be proud of yourself! It feels wonderful to get so close to a poem and feel what the poet felt when writing it.