The Lost Art of Poetry Memorization

When I was in Junior High, we had to memorize a poem and recite it in front of the class. I, of course, chose the one that Ponyboy had read in the Outsiders, Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost.
Ever since then I've loved working on memorizing poems or stanzas that I love so that they are always in my head when ever I need them.

While visiting the Poetry Trail at the Robert Frost Museum in Franconia last week, I came upon another one which I wanted to live in my head.

Hyla Brook -

BY June our brook’s run out of song and speed.

Sought for much after that, it will be found

Either to have gone groping underground

(And taken with it all the Hyla breed

That shouted in the mist a month ago,

Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)—

Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,

Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent

Even against the way its waters went.

Its bed is left a faded paper sheet

Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat—

A brook to none but who remember long.

This as it will be seen is other far

Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.

We love the things we love for what they are.

So, last night I worked on memorizing it so that I know it by heart. I read it aloud a few times (I think that poetry, like a play, is meant to be read aloud, so I always read it that way) then I listened to Robert Frost himself read it. At first I had the first part and the last part down, but kept forgetting the middle. I can usually picture words in my head so I made sure to look at each line. Then I wrote down just the first letter of each line to trigger the whole line if I got stuck.

It worked, and then I made dinner while saying it out loud over and over again. Then when I woke up this morning, I said it again. Now it's in my head, and can be taken out when I need a hiking cadence or something to cleanse the palate of my brain between tasks.

There are some Edna St. Vincent Millay sonnets that live in my brain, and I'd like to work on some more Frost poems. It's sort of like knowing a song by heart, you just do after a while.

Do other people do this?

I Think I Am Part Mermaid

I don't know how else to explain the irresistible pull the ocean had on me tonight. I was happily in my polenta & shrimp-induced food calmness (not quite coma) and enjoying a glass of rose' when the next thing I knew I was checking the tide, the time of sunset, and in my bathing suit and on my bike on my way to the beach.

It's a tiny little thing, rocky shore and not much parking, but there were a few families settling in for the night with chairs and dinner. No one else in the water though, except me. It was the perfect temperature, just the tiniest bit choppy. I swam for a while. Then just floated, head back, arms out, seeing only the sky, hearing only the clinking of the rocks against each other from the waves. I wanted to nap there. I thought "if I try to do a triathlon, what if I don't want to leave the water? What if I just stay and swim and float and they wonder - who is that girl who won't get out of the water and on her bike?" and "High tide is tomorrow at 6am, can I come back then?"

When it was time to leave, my legs didn't know what to do. They had turned back into legs and were clumsy trying to leave the water, collapsing under me to leave me sitting on a rock for a bit, my brain trying to make the transition out of the water and back onto land. I made it, biked home, turned back into a human again.

Inland, By Edna St. Vincent Millay

People that build their houses inland,
People that buy a plot of ground
Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
Far from the sea-board, far from the sound

Of water sucking the hollow ledges,
Tons of water striking the shore,—
What do they long for, as I long for
One salt smell of the sea once more?

People the waves have not awakened,
Spanking the boats at the harbour's head,
What do they long for, as I long for,—
Starting up in my inland bed,

Beating the narrow walls, and finding
Neither a window nor a door,
Screaming to God for death by drowning,—
One salt taste of the sea once more?

Despite Appearances

I did not have a bad day today. Had you been looking in on me as I had the brilliant idea to get my car inspected on my day off, and then received the news that it would cost $1400, or maybe $1800 to get it to pass, and oh, you need a new front license plate, and then drove to the other shop closer to my house to have it looked at again, and sat for another 45 minutes while they went through it, oh, only $1000, good news. Still need new plate. Don't get pulled over. Bring it back Tuesday.

Then coming home to find that my aging dog had left a gift for me on the bathroom floor. Clean that up. Take the clothes off the line. Dishes need washing. Clothes need folding. (Thank god there are no children who need tending.)

But the reality is - it's all ok. None of it is a crisis. No matter the cost of the car repairs, I can afford it and then my car will be better and last me longer. Dishes can be washed. Clothes can be folded. Life will go on. No one is sick. No one is dying. No one has been betrayed. I come home to a safe and clean and beautiful neighborhood. I have everything I need. My life is beautiful.

Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

I love this poem. Every so often when I start to get anxious, I think "oh, if I am good and get things in order and exercise and clean and do all the right things something will notice and it will be better. I'll be good, I swear." Then I remember this poem, I do not have to be good and walk on my knees. I just have to be. And I can clean or exercise, not because I need to be good but because it feels good to move and live in a pleasant environment.

But it was still a tiring day, with lots of reminding myself that it wasn't a bad day. So I might just find a sad movie to watch and start again tomorrow.

The Journey

I returned to the yoga studio today. Somehow the days slipped by with biking and walking and not yoga. "Somehow" is a cop out. There was no yoga because I didn't do yoga. No somehow about it.

Anyway, I always think that the one hour Friday morning class will be easy because it's an hour. Oh, no. Think again. Teacher and I both want me to get into forearm balance, which meant lots of dolphin and plank. And my favorite flow from parsvakonasana into ardha chandrasana, which felt much stronger and graceful than it has in the past. And I was able to do all my chaturanga dandhasanas with straight legs and then flip up into up-dog without dropping my hips and legs to the ground. It took some brute strength but I'll get to the graceful flow soon enough.

Then we worked on my forearm balance. I can get to down dog, and shift forward to put my shoulders about my elbows, and there the weakness sets in. My arms and shoulders and hands that feel so strong in other poses, just start to feel so weak. So we work. I lift one leg up, then the other. Then rest. Then do head stand to get me upside down, to work on lifting my shoulderblades up (down) my back. Then shoulderstand with my triceps pleading with me to be done.

At the end of Savasana, my teacher read this poem:

The Journey, by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

So, I'm off to stride deeper and deeper into the world, determined to save the only life I can save.