Weekly Challenge #2: Memorize a Poem (How’d You Do?)

I likewise didn’t get entirely through however almost, A Daylight Art by my preferred artist Seamus Heaney. I enthusiastically suggest any of his assortments, this one is from The Haw Lantern. I will say, however I fizzled, I cherished having this test in the rear of my head all week, coming back to the sonnet again and again caused an opportunity to feel pensive.

Coming back to this idea many years later. Lately I have been feeling the need to take on a new challenge, one more mental than physical, and decided I’d try to memorize a poems. I vaguely recalled that you had written about poetry once or twice through the years, and so I came here looking for ideas for a poem to memorize. Wild Geese was lovely and seemed not too daunting of a place to start.

What I didn’t realize was how memorizing a poem isn’t just about reciting the lines. Speaking the words aloud, over and over again, and the act of pulling them from the page that I’ve imprinted in my head, has completely cracked open new meaning and beauty for me. As I memorized each line, moving on only after I’d internalized all of the lines before, I came to: “Meanwhile the while geese, high in the clean blue air,/ are heading home again.” And tears came to my eyes with the sheer joy and pain of that image. What a gift to myself.

I love your blog! Here is a poem i read regularly.

walking prayer: by Donna Miesbach

May your steps be filled with confidence.
May they take you to inspiring places.
May they feed you at your deepest levels.
May they spark your imagination and replenish your spirit.
May they break through the tangled places in your life, and be for
you a way of pilgrimage along the secret mountain of your life, and
as you seek the path to climb it.
May you find it goes within.
May it lead you to peaceful places and healing waters.
May it call you to quiet times that renew and restore
As only true solitude can do.

This is such a beautiful poem. I think I must share it.

Dover Beach. Matthew Arnold. The most beautiful, saddest poem I know. “Where ignorant armies clash by night.” and “Ah, love, let us be true to one another.”

My favorite poem is from Christina Rossetti called “Remember”. I love it.
“Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

There is a free app by Penguin called Poems by Heart– might help with this challenge!

Another beautiful poem that I’ve loved since college and am going to memorise this week is Frank Marshall Davis’ ‘Four Glimpses of Night’ – what amazing imagery!

1
Eagerly
Like a woman hurrying to her lover
Night comes to the room of the world
And lies, yielding and content
Against the cool round face
Of the moon.

2
Night is a curious child, wandering
Between earth and sky, creeping
In windows and doors, daubing
The entire neighborhood
With purple paint.
Day
Is an apologetic mother
Cloth in hand
Following after.

3
Peddling
From door to door
Night sells
Black bags of peppermint stars
Heaping cones of vanilla moon
Until
His wares are gone
Then shuffles homeward
Jingling the gray coins
Of daybreak.

4
Night’s brittle song, silver-thin,
Shatters into a billion fragments
Of quiet shadows
At the blaring jazz
Of a morning sun…..

This poem is beautiful! I hardly say this, but I feel moved.

I’m coming to this after-the-fact but I love the idea of it. I think I should pick one anyway. Thanks for the challenge.

I have only ever memorized my favourite lines from the poem ‘To a Skylark’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley (Husband to Mary Shelley of ‘Frankenstein’ fame).

Yet, if we could scorn
Hate and pride and fear,
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Maria xx
http://www.cheekypinktulip.blogspot.com

It’s true,that idea of mental furniture. My husband is a priest, and when he visits the very elderly, often they can’t remember a lot of things and sometimes can’t even have a conversation, but when he sings an old hymn with them or performs the liturgy, they sing or speak along, bc thay memorized it so long ago, and in that moment, they are so happy and aware, and communing with this other human being for a little while.

What a great challenge, I loved reading through all the poems that people chose. I didn’t see it so I didn’t do it but I plan to memorize one of these and save the rest to share with those I love on special occaisions.

I do remember a song I sang in high school based on Walt Whitman’s Song of the Open Road. It has such hope and starts out:

“Afoot and lighthearted, I take to the open road
Healthy, free, the world before me,
A long brown path before me, leadign wherever I choose.”

I have thought of this so many times over the years. Thanks for prompting me to seek out poetry that speaks to me.

This was such a wonderful challenge and while I didn’t accept it it did allow me to rediscover some poets i have long loved (Billy Collins) and discover a new one to love (Jane Kenyon). I also thank Margueax for sharing that poem with us. It has stayed with me, like “mental furniture”.

loved this challenge! Though I wimped out a little and chose a very short poem…

raise your words
not voice,
it is rain that makes flowers
not thunder.

I missed your challenge last week, but I just started poetry with my JH kids, so here is an ode that I think is just lovely.

Ode to My Socks
by Pablo Neruda

Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder’s hands,
two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them
as if they were two cases
knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,
Violent socks,
my feet were two fish made of wool,
two long sharks
sea blue, shot through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons,
my feet were honored in this way
by these heavenly socks.
They were so handsome for the first time
my feet seemed to me unacceptable
like two decrepit firemen,
firemen unworthy of that woven fire,
of those glowing socks.

Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere as schoolboys
keep fireflies,
as learned men collect
sacred texts,
I resisted the mad impulse to put them
in a golden cage and each day give them
birdseed and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers in the jungle
who hand over the very rare green deer
to the spit and eat it with remorse,
I stretched out my feet and pulled on
the magnificent socks and then my shoes.

The moral of my ode is this:
beauty is twice beauty
and what is good is doubly good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool in winter.

I have two sonnets memorized…but then, I’m an English teacher ;)
Shakespeare’s sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnet 2 from Astrophil and Stella
Not at first sight, nor with a dribbèd shot,
Love gave the wound, which, while I breathe will bleed;
But known worth did in mine of time proceed,
Till by degrees it had full conquest got.
I saw, and liked; I liked, but lovèd not;
I loved, but straight did not what Love decreed:
At length to Love’s decrees I forced agreed,
Yet with repining at so partial lot.
Now even that footstep of lost liberty
Is gone; and now, like slave-born Muscovite,
I call it praise to suffer tyranny;
And now employ the remnant of my wit
To make myself believe that all is well,
While with a feeling skill I paint my hell.

I loved this challenge! I love having a poem to memorize in my head when I’m falling asleep instead of making lists in my head of what needs to get done the next day etc.

I am loving these challenges Joanna.
Poetry is something that intrigues me- after this I promised myself I would read more.
For the challenge I decided to learn a Spoken word poem- Love Poem by Rudy Francisco.
I first came across a transcript and just fell in love. Then discovered it was a spoken word poem, saw a live reading and my heart just melted.

My favourite passage is : “I would write about how I see your face in every cloud and your reflection in every window. You see I’ve written a million poems hoping that somehow maybe someway you’ll jump out of the page and be closer to me cause if you were here right now I would massage your back until your skin sings songs your lips don’t even know the words too, until your heartbeat sounds like my last name and you smile like the pacific ocean.”

i memorized langston hughes-suicide note

the calm

cool face over the river

asked me for a kiss.

and i memorized this years ago its his other poem april rain song

let the rain kiss you

let the rain beat upon your head with silver liguid drops

let the rain sing you a lullaby

let the rain make still pools on the sidewalk

the rain makes running pools in the gutter

the rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night

and i love the rain

My favorite poem of all time is “the red wheelbarrow” by william carlos williams. It is very simple, but powerful. I love this challenge, and although didn’t memorize anything new (this one I have known for a long time), I want to try with some of the new ones suggested!

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

We’re working on “The Blues” by Langston Hughes. Kind of a cop-out (it’s short!), but I like to imagine my kids in some someday music appreciation course, and the teacher asks, “What’s the Blues?” And they’re like, “Well . . . “

When the shoe strings break
On both your shoes
And you’re in a hurry —
That’s the blues.

When you go to buy a candy bar
And you’ve lost the dime you had —
Slipped through a hole in your pocket somewhere —
That’s the blues, too, and bad!

Great challenge! I love, love the poem you chose, and this is a great opportunity to learn about poems and poets I never knew. xox

I didn’t manage to memorize a poem, but I did buy a book of poetry (something I have been meaning to do for a long time). Maybe this week I will choose one to memorize, or at the very least add some poetry reading to my life.

Loved this. I memorized “XXX” by Housman, which I stumbled upon just before this challenge. I felt both moved by and connected to it and am so happy I have it as a piece of “mental furniture” now… I think maybe it’s a weathered, old trunk. :)

“Shake hands, we shall never be friends, all’s over;
I only vex you the more I try.
All’s wrong that ever I’ve done or said,
And nought to help it in this dull head:
Shake hands, here’s luck, good-bye.

But if you come to a road where danger
Or guilt or anguish or shame’s to share,
Be good to the lad that loves you true
And the soul that was born to die for you,
And whistle and I’ll be there.”

GREAT challenge, Joanna!

I Wish In the City of Your Heart by Robley Wilson
I wish in the city of your heart
you would let me be the street
where you walk when you are most
yourself. I imagine the houses:
It has been raining, but the rain
is done and the children kept home
have begun opening their doors.

i got festive and tried to remember a poem i wrote for this time of year:

dear reader

here’s our plan for

halloween:

chase your demons

become the hunter

and less of the prey

become a pyromaniac

at least for this one day

take your fears on

ignite!

on paper

of course

because they burn faster

one after the other

that way

i’ll begin:

a fear

being unable to recognize myself

in the ink scribbled across the page

in these words

and the barely audible voice

i don’t always claim as my own

(am i speaking my truth?)

(am i in the real here and now?)

a fear

blame

blaming you

blaming circumstance

blaming religion

blaming anyone everyone every thing

(am i every choice i have made?)

(am i a space i believe in?)

a fear

the kind of aching loss

where you –

a piece at a time –

lose you

(can even my hurt make me happy?)

(am i more than my pain?)

a fear

anything animal or insect

that disobeys

my shrill “shoo!”

at first cry

dear reader

forget about what you

and i know of all hallow’s eve

the masquerade

the fears and rotten candy

forget the masks you live behind

every other day of the year

the deceit

the perceptions

the fears we have

built our lives around

set it all ablaze

in this wild bonfire before us

hand in hand

body in body in rhythm

moving to a melody of memories

beating from our chests

take a good long look

at the faces in the flames

the old spirits

come to life

swaying with us in this

midnight adagio

all saints, all souls

los muertos

forever intertwined

in our heart song

………………….

(a pause for the silence between us and them

and to take a breath in)

………………….

dear reader

these words were to

scream of the terror

lodged in your throat

the dead scream

of everything

we have left

unwritten and unsaid

these words were to

be made in the image

of dorian grey

etched with every

impure impulse indulged

along the way

these words were to

follow close behind you

in the shadows

by day

and lay beside your body

whispering through your dreams

by night

these words were to be

the heart of human darkness

unintentional

merciless and messy

suffocating

leaving your body

bereft of soul and

sound

these words were meant

to be thriller

to be halloween

to be mwa-ha-ha

to be of ghosts and goblins

and vampire queens

to be of the gothic and the grotesque

of blood and bones

drenched in tears and sweat

drawing out our very last breath

all bound by a Hallmark seal

these words were to be

fear

in more than one syllable

they would have been…

were they not the words

passed on from soul to soul

our bodies underneath our bodies

sharing secrets

in between these lines

revealing ourselves to our selves

exposed

terrifyingly immaculate

miracles made into flesh

the stuff of legends and strange gods

you and i

occupying this space

where we belong

where we are always growing into

free of masks

free of monsters

free to be in the here and now

where the real work

of living goes on

fearless

– me