the Boys (Including Grace) Memorize Poetry

I had heard that my aunts in Indiana read my blog, but as they had left no trace of their visits here I didn't know that for sure. My Aunt Rachel came out of hiding, though, and commented about my new favorite poem. Which makes me want to recount my experiences with poetry--how I used to hate it and now am beginning to love it. This post is not funny or witty, and maybe it's downright boring, but this is my blog, afterall, and I want to remember this.

My first encounters with poetry came from my birthday cards. When I was growing up, cards with poems by Helen Steiner Rice were very popular. They must have been, because I got many of them. They all had at least one thing in common: I never read more than 3 lines. Ugh. Maybe Helen Steiner Rice is a good poet (as an adult I still cannot bring myself to read her to find out), but she is not what an unaided child should be served as his only diet. These early birthday card experiences shaped the way I viewed poetry. Any time I saw the tell-tale marks of a poem anywhere, I simply skipped over it. I still catch myself doing it, as when I read a poemless Lord of the Rings. Even reading the poetry of the minor prophets is hard for me.

Skip to fourth grade. I had written at least one poem, whether on my own or for an assignment I do not know. What I vividly remember is that the teacher was calling on each child to stand and recite a poem he had memorized. I panicked. I had forgotten. NO PROBLEM. I stood and quoted my own poem, and it sufficed. Here it is:

City Snow and Country Snow

City snow is dirty and brown,

Piled high upon the ground.

Country snow is clean and white,

Gleaming in the winter's light.

Did you find yourself skipping over that? If so, go back and read it (it's painless, I promise) and rest assured you are not alone.

I'm thinking that poem was written for my own pleasure, because when I wrote it for an assignment in 5th grade, the teacher was sure I plagurized it. I don't think I did, but what do I know. He may have made me write another one, but again, my memory of the details is fuzzy.

As far as I know, there was no other poetry in my life, aside from the unread birthday cards, from 5th grade until 8th grade. In 8th grade we had to memorize a poem. So many lines for a C, B, or A. I had a decent memory and decided to get an A. The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere was my choice, and I only memorized enough of it to get the grade I wanted. I still remember some of it, and that reading and interacting with that poem was a good step in my recovery from poetry-phobia.

Maybe it was in 8th, or maybe it was in high school that I realized there were good poems out there, and I knew I should love them, but I still didn't. I then did a curious thing for someone who didn't much care for poetry: I infected my little sister with a love of poetry. Maybe she didn't get any of those stupid birthday cards, or maybe she was wired differently, or maybe she just wanted to like what she thought big sister liked, but when I read Poe and Holmes and Bishop and Frost to her, she loved them. When I saw her enjoyment, I began to enjoy them, too, in a vague way, and I learned that poetry is meant to be shared and talked about.

I did have brief encounters with Shakespeare in high school, too, and loved the story but could do without the poetry. It wasn't until I saw him acted that I began to love him.

So where does that take us? To college. In college I learned to love a limerick. A Decrepit Old Gas Man Named Peter was, and is, my favorite. I wrote a baudy one, which I've now forgotten, and since then I've written many that are not baudy. I came to love humorous poetry, and I believe that is where a love for poetry usually begins. Helen Steiner Rice was not funny--at least the first three lines.

In college I was also introduced to Shel Silverstein, whom I loved. Why didn't someone read his poetry to me before? No, wait. One of my teachers did. I remember hearing Sarah Sylvia Cynthia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out in elementary school, but as it was enjoyable I did not class it as poetry. I also read Terence, This is Stupid Stuff, which stuff refers to poetry. It immediately became my favorite, mostly because of the title and his drinking of beer (very risque for this (at the time) Baptist girl).

And then jump a bunch of years. Somehow or other I heard of The Hound of Heaven. Not at all humorous, but I wanted to read it, and I did. I understood very little of it, but it held a spell over me. I wanted to understand it. I knew I would really love it if I did come to understand it.

And then I began to homeschool Bradford. I was interested in classical education, so in the early years, I had him memorize a lot. Bible verses, catechism, and poetry. I bought The Random House Book of Poetry for Children and practically devoured it. Imagine! A whole book of good poems! I chose which poems I wanted him to know, and he and later Ben and Nathaniel learned them. Caterpillar by Christina Rossetti, Algy Met a Bear, The Slithergadee by Shel Silverstein, among others. Then for whatever reason we stopped memorizing so much. Probably it was Baby #4, Moving, and Babies #5 & #6.

Now we are memorizing again. I bought two more poetry books, and we are at it full force. There is a program called Linguistic Development Through Poetry or some fancy name like that. It consists of four levels of 20 poems each which a child is to memorize over the course of a few years. It costs $65, probably because it has such a fancy name and comes with a CD. I did not buy it, but I read about it, and I've set up our memory program in a similar manner. In fact, I found the list of Level One poems and used it as a base, only exchanging one dumb poem for a better one. I liked the list because it began with short, funny poems. After several humorous poems, a short RLStevenson poem is memorized, and then back to a funny one. Toward the end of Level One the poems are a bit longer and more meaningful, but not too deep.

We memorize poems and recite them during lunch. The list of poems in the sidebars are the poems we have completed. They quote all of their memorized poems at least three times a week. And when they've learned one stanza, we add another. They are amazingly fast at memorizing, so we are getting through them fairly quickly. Even Grace doesn't want to be left out. "I want to say 'Carrots'" is a common plea during our recitation time. (She means Celery by Ogden Nash)

I've diverted the story of the growth of my own love for poetry to tell about how I'm getting the boys (and eventually the girls) to love poetry. Basically, I'm starting at the beginning with them, learning to enjoy poems meant for young children, and I expect my love for deeper poems will ripen as I present them to the children. I love homeschooling for this reason: I get to learn and love learning right along with them, learning and loving stuff I never did before.

So I'll leave this very long post with a poem, which is appropriate.

Keep a Poem in Your Pocket

by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers

Keep a poem in your pocket

and a picture in your head

and you'll never feel lonely

at night when you're in bed.

The little poem will sing to you

the little picture bring to you

a dozen dreams to dance to you

at night when you're in bed.

So--

Keep a picture in your pocket

and a poem in your head

and you'll never feel lonely

at night when you're in bed.

Now go back and actually read it. It won't bite.