Tracy K. Smith, 52nd Poet Laureate of the U.S., says you don’t just memorize poems because of the rhythm and the rhyme but because of the meaning, which might change for you as you grow older and discover that different lines resonate for you. (Getty Images)

Tracy K. Smith, 52nd Poet Laureate of the U.S., says you don’t just memorize poems because of the rhythm and the rhyme but because of the meaning, which might change for you as you grow older and discover that different lines resonate for you. (Getty Images)

Taking a walk? Recite a poem or two to keep you company

Find the pleasure of running through poetry in your head, when away from a screen or a book.

  • By Laurie Hertzel Minneapolis Star Tribune
  • Sunday, February 23, 2020 1:30am
  • Life

By Laurie Hertzel / Minneapolis Star Tribune

I don’t have a lot of regrets, but I have a few. I regret not learning a second language to the point where I can converse. I regret not learning to swim, and I regret giving up the violin. (Though my violin teacher might have thought that was the right decision.)

And I regret not memorizing more poetry. But that is a regret I can do something about, right now. And I intend to.

I’ve been thinking about this since last fall, when a friend mentioned in passing that he had taken to reciting the poetry of Robert Frost while on his daily walk. When he said this, the poems that I had been required to memorize as a teenager — all while I was in junior high, all under the same English teacher — came rushing back into my brain.

“Blue Girls,” by John Crowe Ransom. The prologue to Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” The opening lines of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” — not the translated version, but the wonderful Middle English version with “shoures soote” and “swich licór.” So fun to recite with passion and verve, mystifying your friends!

There are poems I memorized on my own, too: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” which perhaps everyone has memorized. “Dogs and Weather,” by Winifred Welles, which I loved as a very young girl, long before I had a dog of my own. And so many others — entertaining poems, rhyming poems, not necessarily important poems but poems that got stuck in my brain almost in spite of myself. (Nursery rhymes, for instance.) (And why have rhymes in the nursery? Hmmm.)

What is the benefit in memorizing poetry? Is there one? Is a benefit necessary?

For me, there is the pure pleasure of running through a poem in full, in my head, when I am away from a screen or a book. Or having a poem, or a few lines of a poem, pop into my head for no apparent reason — because something in life brings to mind those words. Or maybe just for the pleasure of the language, the entirely new way of looking at the world.

In an essay in the New Yorker some years ago, poet and novelist Brad Leithauser wrote of memorizing, “You take the poem inside you, into your brain chemistry if not your blood, and you know it at a deeper, bodily level than if you simply read it off a screen.”

And he quotes scholar Catherine Robson: “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.”

If we do not learn by heart, the heart does not feel.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith talked about this in November when she was in town. You don’t just memorize because of the rhythm and the rhyme, Smith said, but because of the meaning, which might change for you as you grow older and discover that different lines resonate for you.

The meaning of “Blue Girls” certainly changed for me as I grew older. When I learned the poem in seventh grade, the line “Go listen to your teachers, old and contrary, without believing a word” was the one that resonated (and made me snicker). But now I am more interested in the lines about the transience of beauty and about growing old.

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Life

Brandon Hailey of Cytrus, center, plays the saxophone during a headlining show at Madam Lou’s on Friday, Dec. 29, 2023 in Seattle, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Lynnwood-based funk octet Cytrus has the juice

Resilience and brotherhood take center stage with ‘friends-first’ band.

FILE - In this April 11, 2014 file photo, Neko Case performs at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Calif. Fire investigators are looking for the cause of a fire on Monday, Sept. 18, 2017, that heavily damaged Case’s 225-year-old Vermont home. There were no injuries, though a barn was destroyed. It took firefighters two hours to extinguish the blaze. (Photo by Scott Roth/Invision/AP, File)
Music, theater and more: What’s happening in Snohomish County

Singer-songwriter Neko Case, an indie music icon from Tacoma, performs Sunday in Edmonds.

Dominic Arizona Bonuccelli
Tangier’s market boasts piles of fruits, veggies, and olives, countless varieties of bread, and nonperishables, like clothing and electronics.
Rick Steves on the cultural kaleidoscope of Tangier in Morocco

Walking through the city, I think to myself, “How could anyone be in southern Spain — so close — and not hop over to experience this wonderland?”

chris elliott.
Vrbo promised to cover her rental bill in Hawaii, so why won’t it?

When Cheryl Mander’s Vrbo rental in Hawaii is uninhabitable, the rental platform agrees to cover her new accommodations. But then it backs out. What happened?

The Moonlight Swing Orchestra will play classic sounds of the Big Band Era on April 21 in Everett. (submitted photo)
Music, theater and more: What’s happening in Snohomish County

Relive the Big Band Era at the Port Gardner Music Society’s final concert of the season in Everett.

2024 Honda Ridgeline TrailSport AWD (Honda)
2024 Honda Ridgeline TrailSport AWD

Honda cedes big boy pickup trucks to the likes of Ford, Dodge… Continue reading

Would you want to give something as elaborate as this a name as mundane as “bread box”? A French Provincial piece practically demands the French name panetiere.
A panetiere isn’t your modern bread box. It’s a treasure of French culture

This elaborately carved French antique may be old, but it’s still capable of keeping its leavened contents perfectly fresh.

(Judy Newton / Great Plant Picks)
Great Plant Pick: Mouse plant

What: Arisarum proboscideum, also known as mouse plant, is an herbaceous woodland… Continue reading

Bright green Japanese maple leaves are illuminated by spring sunlight. (Getty Images)
Confessions of a ‘plantophile’: I’m a bit of a junky for Japanese maples

In fact, my addiction to these glorious, all-season specimens seems to be contagious. Fortunately, there’s no known cure.

2024 Hyundai IONIQ 6 Limited (Hyundai)
2024 Hyundai IONIQ 6 Limited

The 2024 Hyundai IONIQ 6 Limited is a sporty, all-electric, all-wheel drive sedan that will quickly win your heart.

The 2024 Dodge Hornet R/T hybrid’s face has the twin red lines signifying the brand’s focus on performance. (Dodge)
2024 Hornet R/T is first electrified performance vehicle from Dodge

The all-new compact SUV travels 32 miles on pure electric power, and up to 360 miles in hybrid mode.

Don’t blow a bundle on glass supposedly made by the Henry William Stiegel

Why? Faked signatures, reused molds and imitated styles can make it unclear who actually made any given piece of glass.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.