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Call it a driveway moment. One of those times you’re listening so hard you don’t want to turn off your radio. Mine was tuned to NPR when General John Borling, former Vietnam POV, spoke about his just-published book of poems composed while he was a prisoner. He’d written, memorized and tapped them out in Morse Code. What an amazing story. The story and the poems made me sit and listen.
From swinging in time to Robert Louis Stevenson—
How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
— to teaching children manners a la the Goops, I’m a big believer in having a poem—tiny, massive, rhyming or not— learned by heart and at the ready.
When I was a school librarian, one of my favorite things about April was our annual Poetry Assembly. And although it was a few years ago, I’d wager a few still remember the third grade’s marvelous recitation and dramatic presentation of I AM THE DOG, I AM THE CAT, with Donald Hall’s genius alternating cat and dog voices.
But, really, why bother to memorize a poem when it can be called up at a moment’s notice from some distant website? Does anybody care? Do you even remember a poem you learned in third grade?
The best argument for verse memorization may be that it provides us with knowledge of a qualitatively and physiologically different variety: you take the poem inside you, into your brain chemistry if not your blood, and you know it at a deeper, bodily level than if you simply read it off a screen.
I think we writers need poetry inside us deeper than others, something to hear when we’re searching for the perfect word or a phrase that creates an OH-MY-GOSH moment in our stories. They don’t call it “learned by heart” for nothing.
Maybe I don’t remember every word I sang, chanted, recited in school, in Sunday school, at summer camp.
I do recall enough to get me through a family supper with a smile.
The Goops
by Gillette Burgess
The Goops they lick their fingers
And the Goops they lick their knives:
They spill their froth on the tablecloth
Oh, they lead disgusting lives!
The Goops they talk while eating,
And loud and fast they chew;
And that is why I’m glad that I
Am not a Goop, are you?
Augusta Scattergood is former school librarian, a book reviewer and an avid blogger. GLORY BE, her debut novel, was named one of Amazon’s Top Twenty Middle School books for 2012. A second novel has been sold to Scholastic for Fall, 2014 publication.
Am not a Goop, are you?
Augusta Scattergood is former school librarian, a book reviewer and an avid blogger. GLORY BE, her debut novel, was named one of Amazon’s Top Twenty Middle School books for 2012. A second novel has been sold to Scholastic for Fall, 2014 publication.
Love this, Augusta. The poems I’ve memorized over the years are dear to me. And The Goops remind me of The Gloppers. Are you familiar with those “globs of undulating glopper ooze”?
I never heard The Goops before! How funny.
I memorized my share of poems growing up, especially A.A.Milne (Disobedience begins: James James/ Morrison Morrison/ Weatherby George DuPree/ Took great care of his mother,/ though he was only three…) and Robert Frost (Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening). My problem is I now remember snatches of them, but not the entire poem.
Augusta, I love the idea that writers need poetry inside us deeper than others.
You must never go down/to the end of town/without consulting me!
I LOVE this post. There is so much to learning poems by heart and I have been doing this for 10 years with my 3rd graders. What I have learned is that if you approach it the way I do it, the kids LOVE to do this. They enjoy it, and realize how much they learn from knowing poems by heart. AND the amazing thing is that they do this with no test, no pressure, no homework and no requirement to participate. Plus I have learned a lot of poems along with them. Random repetition and a pleasant, happy method of invitation will work. Too many people shy away from poetry based on unpleasant school experiences and feeling like they could not “understand” the poem (this has happened to me a lot, too, and I wonder who actually does understand some of the more “out there” poetry, but I digress) or can’t memorize and remember or feel nervous to be on a stage. My system works. Kids embrace this and come to love poets and poetry. They perform and some even request to do solo recitations at our June Poetry Night. My emphasis is on learning as a group. But I do it naturally. 3rd graders join in with little to no effort and if you keep it positive, they recite along. Leads to increased vocabulary, reading fluency and more.