Also. if you want to branch out from poetry, why not try memorizing Chinese characters? It really does use some new parts of your brain, and is a hell of a challenge. You don’t even need to speak any Chinese to start recognizing characters, and the first time you are able to glean even a little meaning from text it’s about as gratifying as it can get.
Anothder vote for the Cremation of Dan McGee, and one for the other famous Robert Service poem, The Shooting of Dangerous Dan McGrew. That may not be the exact title, but…
Or just about anything by Kipling.
I learned to recite “The man from Snowy River”. It still gives me goosebumps at the exciting bits.The Man From Snowy River - The Man From Snowy River Poem by A B Banjo Paterson
It has a great rythym and can (and has) been sung.
If you really want to test yourself…
Whatever for though, when there are so many other things you could be using your memory for? Useful things, for instance. Like poems.
p.s. It’s not even a feat that an audience can appreciate. How many are going to know if you were wrong?
We had to select and memorize a poem when I was in 7th grade and Jabberwocky was my pick. When I did my recitation, my teacher very correctly observed that I’d made that choice just to annoy her. She had to find a copy and follow the text carefully as I recited it. I got it right. I’m 53 and I can still recite it.
Did she teach literature? I’m surprised. I only know the first verse of Jabberwocky, but if someone recited it I’m pretty sure I could tell if they went wrong. That’s why it’s so good - it’s not just random words.
As to the OP, what about the Fitzgerald translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam? Great stuff and you can do as much or little as you want.
Matildaby Hillaire Belloc
MATILDA told such Dreadful Lies,
It made one Gasp and Stretch one’s Eyes;
Her Aunt, who, from her Earliest Youth,
Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth,
Attempted to Believe Matilda:
The effort very nearly killed her …
The Highwayman, by Alfred Noyes, is a dramatic narrative which would probably lend itself to an open mic performance.
If you’re interested generally in memorizing poetry, take a look at A Poem a Day which has (mostly) short poems, selected because they are worth memorizing. The second volume is available in the UK.
If you really out to impress people with your powers of memory, why don’t you learn something monstrously long, such as Paradise Lost? It may sound like a stretch, but I used to have Shakespeare’s Richard III by heart, and Milton wouldn’t be that much more difficult. Plus it means you have a great store of something to ‘read’ if you’re stuck somewhere for 10 hours without a book.
It’s not The Jungle, it’s
THE CONGO
and you can find it at
It’s a lot funner if you ignore the author’s interpretative annotations
and use your very own.
The Cremation of Sam McGee is at
And very pleasing to the eye it is! Appealing layout, attractive font, and nice illustrations.
Find The Shooting of Dan McGrew at
I want to ask a question about memorizing Pi - but I don’t want to hurt feelings. So please don’t take offense, but…
How do you get people to listen to the recitation? Do you give them a book with Pi so they can check your accuracy as you go along? How long does it take to get to recitethe highest level you’ve memorized.
Here’s an easy one.
**Sister **
Sister, sister, you’re like a blister,
In the skin,
Sister, sister, you little terror,
That’s what you are,
Enough, enough, you’ve gone too far!
Roaring, screaming sister.
(By An Gadaí aged about 9 or 10 )
I seem to remember one about a man from Nantucket…
While I agree that Robert W. Service makes for fun memorization, I wonder why not go for something a bit more inspirational:
The St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry IV.
So many great replies! I think I will start with Jabberwocky. I will report back tomorrow after I’ve done this to pick another. Since I haven’t memorized in a while, I need to start small. (only 6 different stanzas, and I half know it anyway.)
Barn Owl: Was this the poem featured in the cave scene of Dead Poet’s Society? (I don’t think I could perform that around here. It would come off as racist, I think.)
An Gadaí: that was sweet, thanks.
Paradise Lost seems like a crazy idea that I might be tempted to do, but I’ve never read it. So, would it be worth it? Could I just do one of the books? Which one?
Cremation? Got it.
St Crispen’s Day? Got it.
Kubla Khan? Got it.
Ch 13 of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians?* Got it.
Paul Revere? Got it.
Hamlet Act 1 Sc 1, “What a piece of work…” Got it.
A life? I don’t got it.
*It ends with “Love never fails.” Great fun at weddings and useful to get that person next to you to find another damn seat on the airplane.
Jabberwocky was my offering as well. I had to learn Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room by William Wordsworth also , but it doesn’t get the same play as a nonsense poem with a Vorpal blade in it. Fire and Ice by Frost was the first one I memorized cause it sounded badass to my 15 year old brain, but that’s a bit short. Someday I’ll have The Bells by Poe down.
The poems that sprang to mind when I saw the thread title have long since been mentioned: “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” “The Raven,” “Kubla Khan,” “Jabberwocky” (or, as Washoe said, anything by Carroll).
For what it’s worth, my final exam for senior year high school German class was to memorize (auf Deutsch) Goethe’s poem “Das Zauberlehrling” (“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” since popularized by Paul Dukas and Mickey Mouse). I still have a stanza or two of it stuck in my head, more than 20 years later.
How about the Iliad? that should keep you busy…
Brian
I too have a fetish for memorization, have had since the days of my youth. I also have and always have had a love of poetry.
My advice? Aim high, you’ll be astonished at the amount of poetry that can be memorized. I have in my head, perfectly memorized, most of the Satires and Horation Imitations of Alexander Pope, his Dunciad complete; Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel and his MacFlecknoe; all of Milton’s Sonnets, plus his Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, Il Penseroso, L’Allegro; most of the Odes of Keats; Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality; poems by Jonson, Marvell, Gray, Collins and others, as well as huge swathes from Shakespeare.
There’s nothing particularly impressive about this, I’m in my 50s, I started memorizing in my 20s and stopped adding more when I was around 30. Since then I just recite all I’ve learned from time to time to keep it fresh but I can assure you, this stuff lasts a lifetime!
A few tips. I found that in memorizing a new poem it proved really efficacious to rehearse it last thing at night before going to sleep (having gone through it of course many times during the day). In the morning it would be sharply etched in the memory.
Another thing. The rhyming heroic couplets of Dryden and Pope proved the easiest to memorize, blank decasyllabic verse a little trickier, but not by much.
I always wanted to get Paradise Lost down pat but that’s one goal I never achieved.
I guess I have around 9 or 10 thousand lines word perfect, but this is chickenfeed compared to the achievements of the real giants, those who memorize the Bible, Koran, etc.
Good luck with your memorizing!