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Know it by heart
Apr. 2nd, 2008 10:58 amI was lying in bed last night, and instead of an earworm, I had a bit of poetry running through my brain - Longfellow's Psalm of Life which I memorized for an English class in the fifth grade. I memorized four stanzas (not knowing that the version I had was an abbreviated one) and I still can say them off today. Ditto Jabberwocky memorized for the same reason, and two Yeats poems, Sailing to Byzantium and The Second Coming.
Different classes had me memorize bits of Shakespeare, like Portia's speech on Mercy from The Merchant of Venice ("The quality of mercy is not strained/ It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven/ Upon the place beneath..."), Hamlet's "To be or not to be" (but only until "..the bourne from which no traveler returns") and MacBeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" (because we were about to read The Sound and the Fury). And of course, for Chaucer, I memorized the Prologue up until "...that hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke." Oh, and I can't forget everybody's favorite from Dr. Faustus, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?" Everybody loves Marlowe, and I admit to laughing until I nearly wet myself at the scene in Shakespeare in Love when every single auditioning actor went right for it.
Having the poetry stuck in my head made me realize that I wanted to learn more poems by heart. I like villanelles, so I was thinking of getting down One Art by Elizabeth Bishop and The Waking by Theodore Rotheke - both poems I like very, very much. And I know there are more Shakespeare and Marlowe bits I would like to have. I like saying poetry aloud to myself - it feels good. None of the pieces I know is particularly long, and I'm not an actor so I think my ability to learn really long pieces would be limited, but learning one of the long pieces would be fun. Although I don't have a lot of alone time in the car anymore, which is the best place for doing this sort of thing. Maybe the shower?
Do you have poetry you know by heart? Did you have to memorize it for school, or did you do it on your own? Do you say it out loud to yourself in the bathtub or in the car, or maybe you frighten people on the bus by declaiming it loudly?
Different classes had me memorize bits of Shakespeare, like Portia's speech on Mercy from The Merchant of Venice ("The quality of mercy is not strained/ It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven/ Upon the place beneath..."), Hamlet's "To be or not to be" (but only until "..the bourne from which no traveler returns") and MacBeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" (because we were about to read The Sound and the Fury). And of course, for Chaucer, I memorized the Prologue up until "...that hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke." Oh, and I can't forget everybody's favorite from Dr. Faustus, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?" Everybody loves Marlowe, and I admit to laughing until I nearly wet myself at the scene in Shakespeare in Love when every single auditioning actor went right for it.
Having the poetry stuck in my head made me realize that I wanted to learn more poems by heart. I like villanelles, so I was thinking of getting down One Art by Elizabeth Bishop and The Waking by Theodore Rotheke - both poems I like very, very much. And I know there are more Shakespeare and Marlowe bits I would like to have. I like saying poetry aloud to myself - it feels good. None of the pieces I know is particularly long, and I'm not an actor so I think my ability to learn really long pieces would be limited, but learning one of the long pieces would be fun. Although I don't have a lot of alone time in the car anymore, which is the best place for doing this sort of thing. Maybe the shower?
Do you have poetry you know by heart? Did you have to memorize it for school, or did you do it on your own? Do you say it out loud to yourself in the bathtub or in the car, or maybe you frighten people on the bus by declaiming it loudly?
