Memorize a poem

When I was in high school, we participated in a national poetry memorization and recitation event called Poetry Out Loud. The main feature of Poetry Out Loud is a recitation competition. I myself placed in the school competition a few times, which meant I had to memorize at least a couple poems each year I participated. Overall, I probably memorized under a dozen separate poems over my time in high school.

I really enjoyed participating in Poetry Out Loud. Memorization was a good challenge that required you to take a serious interest in the poem. Coming up with a compelling way to recite a poem was similar to acting, but felt more direct. Other students’ performances introduced me to more great poems and inspired me to try new things with my own recitations.

Poetry Out Loud was fun, but I would have liked if poetry were a greater part of our curriculum. In the past, I think poetry memorization played a bigger role in education, as well as in most people’s lives. My grandparents were able to recite poems they memorized back in grade school.

It seems like the culture surrounding poetry has declined in the mainstream. I’ve found that me & my peers rarely even share poems, let alone memorize or recite them. For myself, I don’t think I’ve memorized more than one or two new poems since high school.

One of the cool things about poetry is that even if you have all your favorite poems in a book or on a website, it would still be worth it to memorize them. I would say that enjoyment of a poem is incomplete without memorization. Once you learn a poem, pieces of it occur to you in all sorts of situations. It becomes an always-available part of your thought-world. Maybe we should think about poetry as the words that are worth keeping with you always.

When was the last time you enjoyed a poem? When was the last time you memorized a poem? When was the last time you memorized anything? Let me know your thoughts at my Ctrl-C email: gome ​@ ​ctrl-c.club.