POETRY MEMORIZATION Sara Sánchez Hope College. Good Poetry Teachers: 0 Like poetry and are...
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Transcript of POETRY MEMORIZATION Sara Sánchez Hope College. Good Poetry Teachers: 0 Like poetry and are...
POETRY MEMORIZATION
Sara SánchezHope College
Good Poetry Teachers:0 Like poetry and are enthusiastic about it; take it seriously0 Emphasize the pleasure of poetry0 Provide more amusing and varied activities (poetry
memorization!)0 Allow conversational and informal discussion0 Seek out students’ views, listen to their interpretations, and
treat them with respect and seriousness0 Encourage exploration of pupils’ personal experiences in
relation to poems0 Support the feeling that the emotional experience of poetry is
real
Taken from “The Poetry Teacher: Behavior and Attitudes” by Molly Travers
A Case for Poetry Memorization
0For pure pleasure0Reciprocated devotion0Deepens understanding of the
work’s structure and poetic devices0A form of ownership
“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”
“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
“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”
ACTIVITY
We Real Cool
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
Unit Plan: American Poetry
0 Day 1: Review of literary devices; choose poem and getting acquainted with it
0 Day 2: Watching performances or hearing readings0 Day 3: Memorization
0 Poem By Heart0 Verse by Verse0 Old school Line by line
0 Day 4: Research on Authors0 Day 5: Writing Day about experience—how it sheds light on your
interpretation of the poem0 Days 6-12: Presentations0 Bonus: In-Class Open Mic
Memorizing 0 Poem by Heart by Penguin Classics
Memorization
0 Verse by Heart0 SYK (So You Know)0 Recording it as a video or voice memo
Tips
0 Offer options on poems0 Poems in other languages for your ESL students0 Teach contemporary poetry first and then go
backwards in time0 Do memorization sparingly, so you don’t burden
students0 Teach poems you don’t fully understand—students
will gain confidence by journeying with you to understand the poem
Recommended Poems0 We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks0 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot0 Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson0 One Art by Elizabeth Bishop0 Ozymandias Percy Bysshe Shelley0 Metaphor by Sylvia Plath0 Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas0 Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith0 Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter by Robert Bly0 Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou0 Slowly by Donna Masini