1. Sara Sánchez Hope College
POETRY MEMORIZATION
Sara Sánchez
Hope College

2. Good Poetry Teachers:
Like poetry and are enthusiastic about it; take it seriously
Emphasize the pleasure of poetry
Provide more amusing and varied activities (poetry memorization!)
Allow conversational and informal discussion
Seek out students’ views, listen to their interpretations, and treat them with respect and seriousness
Encourage exploration of pupils’ personal experiences in relation to poems
Support the feeling that the emotional experience of poetry is real
Taken from “The Poetry Teacher: Behavior and Attitudes” by Molly Travers

3. A Case for Poetry Memorization
For pure pleasure
Reciprocated devotion
Deepens understanding of the work’s structure and poetic devices
A form of ownership

4. “The relations among reading, listening, and understanding become more significant. Nowhere are these relations more intensely embodied than in the matter of spoken verse. And nowhere does one learn better how to read either verse or prose aloud than by recitation from memory.” —John Hollander, “Committed to Memory”

5. “The future of the humanities as a common possession depends on the restoration of a simple, single ideal: getting poetry by heart.”—Clive James, Cultural Amnesia

6. “If we do not learn by heart, the heart does not feel the rhythms of poetry as echoes or variations of its own insistent beat.”—Catherine Robson, “Heart Beats: Everyday Life and the Memorized Poem”

7. ACTIVITY

8. We Real Cool We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We
THE POOL PLAYERS. SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
Gwendolyn Brooks

9. Unit Plan: American Poetry
Day 1: Review of literary devices; choose poem and getting acquainted with it
Day 2: Watching performances or hearing readings
Day 3: Memorization
Poem By Heart
Verse by Verse
Old school Line by line
Day 4: Research on Authors
Day 5: Writing Day about experience—how it sheds light on your interpretation of the poem
Days 6-12: Presentations
Bonus: In-Class Open Mic

10. Memorizing
Poem by Heart by Penguin Classics

11. Memorization Verse by Heart SYK (So You Know) Recording it as a video
or voice memo

12. Tips Offer options on poems
Poems in other languages for your ESL students
Teach contemporary poetry first and then go backwards in time
Do memorization sparingly, so you don’t burden students
Teach poems you don’t fully understand—students will gain confidence by journeying with you to understand the poem

13. Recommended Poems We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot
Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson
One Art by Elizabeth Bishop
Ozymandias Percy Bysshe Shelley
Metaphor by Sylvia Plath
Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas
Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith
Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter by Robert Bly
Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou
Slowly by Donna Masini