The Lazy Person’s Guide to Memorizing Poetry
Ezra Pound, 1913
You can memorize a poem in five minutes. Really. You just have to have the right poem. Don’t believe me? Try these:
On His Seventy-fifth Birthday by Walter Savage Landor
I strove with none; for none was worth my strife,
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of life,
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
Too long? Try this one:
In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Today’s activity for National Poetry Month is to commit a poem to memory, so make it a point today to etch one into your brain. Give it a try! If you already have a poem memorized, tell us which one, and why you memorized it. On a good day I can recite “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe and “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll. For more poems to memorize see Committed to Memory: The Best 100 Poems to Memorize, edited by John Hollander.
