Aug 03 2009
The Value of Memorizing Poetry
One of my best teachers was Mrs. Hepburn, who taught eighth-grade English. She was incredibly dignified. I wish I knew more about her, but when I look back , I think of her as someone who might have had a theatrical background. She stood straight and dignified, enunciated her words perfectly, and had what we all thought were extremely high expectations of her students. My memory is that generally we responded with hard work.
One of her famous assignments was the memorization of 250 lines of poetry. I have a difficult time imagining myself doing this today, but I did it then. Each of us chose our poems and then stood and recited our memorized lines to the class. I memorized Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 130-line “Paul Revere’s Ride,” James Whitcomb Riley’s 112-line “Farmer Whipple-Bachelor,” and some other short, forgotten poem that I picked to put me over the required 250 lines.
My memory of actually memorizing the poems is vague, but I have vivid memories of nervously but proudly reciting my poems and seeing my peers recite theirs. I remember being especially impressed by a friend who not only memorized about 14 different poems but also created a three-dimension prop for each.
I have read various articles that tout the positive results of memorizing poetry. One author writes that “one of the best aspects of learning a poem by heart is that you get to take a poem inside of yourself.” (http://articles.poetryx.com/articles/64/#value#value). I want this for my students. My students are kids who struggle with literature of all kinds, and I want them to experience both the pride of memorizing a poem and the ownership of having a poem become theirs.
I like this idea of having students memorize 250 lines of poetry, especially with allowing them to break it up into many short poems. So many of our students can’t speak well in public, and this assignment would give them an opportunity to practice being in front of a group of people speaking.