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One of the great tools of any Poet is memorization. Memorizing and reciting poetry can help a poet write, read, and study poetry. Memorizing poems can benefit your own poetry and writing. By following a few of these suggested steps, anyone can memorize a poem.

Benefits of Memorizing Poetry

If you are a Poet, Writer, or avid reader, memorizing poetry can help you gain further insight into literature and writing. As a Poet, memorization, and recitation are key. At some point, you may have to read a poem out loud and practice always helps. For writers, reading and studying writing no matter the form or style is crucial.

Regardless if you love to read poetry or if you are just curious. Reading and memorizing poems can help you in the future. Analyzing text, recitation and memorization all contribute to learning and retaining information. And it only takes a little bit of curiosity and one poem for someone to fall into poetry completing.

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Step 1: Pick a Poem to Memorize

Skim through a few of your favorite poetry books or search online. Find a poem that you like. It is easier to memorize poems that you like. It may be easier to memorize a poem if you have a printed copy. I would suggest having a printed copy of the poem and a few extra sheets of blank paper.

Step 2: Find a Place to Read Poetry

Once you have your poem picked out, find a place you can study. A quiet place that has no distractions is ideal. Consider an empty room or a quiet spot at a park. Your place of study should be particular to you, find a place you feel comfortable and are familiar with.

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Step 3: Pick apart a Poem

Before you start memorizing, read the poem a few times over to familiarize yourself with it. Using a pen or highlighter, begin to mark off parts of the poem into smaller fragments. Separating the poem visually through line breaks, stanzas or couplets can help you tackle the poem a little at a time.

Step 4: Memorizing a Poem

Take an extra sheet of blank paper and cover the poem. Reveal your marked fragments by moving the blank paper over the poem as you recite the poem slowly out loud. Reciting poetry out loud can help you memorize faster. Try to mimic the rhythm of the poem as you recite. Can you recognize parts of the poem when you recite? Can you visualize the poem on the page in your mind?

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Poems to Memorize

It will take time to memorize a poem. The poems length, form, and style can all contribute to the amount of time it may take you. I recommend picking a shorter poem first such as William Carlos Williams “The Red WheelBarrow”. Starting with smaller poems can help you get used to memorizing. After a bit of practice and a few poems ready to recite, pick harder poems.

Harder poems can include William Shakespeare’s Sonnets, John Donne’s “At the round earth’s imagined corners (Holy Sonnet 7)” or even John Milton’s “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent”. Memorizing a classic poem can help you study poetry. And conducting research can provide you with valuable knowledge about a poem. Knowing the history, cultures, and societies in which poem was written can add to the experience.

Want to learn more about poetry? Feel free to browse these blog posts! If you enjoy what I’ve written, I really appreciate a like, share, or most of all leave a comment and let’s connect ? Thank you!

? How to Read a Poem

? Recommended Poetry Books

? Poetic Forms: Found Poetry

I recently finished reading, Making a Poem: Some Thoughts About Poetry and the People Who Write It by Miller Williams who was a former inaugural poet for the Clinton administration.

This was an interesting read in that Williams looked at writing poetry from angles I had not previously considered such as The Writer and The Editor, The Scientist and The Humanist, and Translate. These are all chapters that begin in the middle to end of the book and discuss relationships between being a writer and the editor, with personal experience from Williams in both positions. The Scientist and The Humanist is a dialogue between Williams and another on the similarities between scientific thinking and the efforts of humanism and particularly how these are mimetic to writing poetry, or what poetry tries to achieve. And lastly, the subject Translate, which is on translating poetry into English or vice versa. Translation being a critical part of the literary world that can often have detrimental effects on the work itself: a beautiful line can be altered into a wobbly ugly thing if a translation fails.

These particular topics were intriguing to me, since I had some inkling of them but have never really read any serious discussion on them. Reading Williams perceptions and responses on these topics helped me gain more insight and information from a reliable source. Overall, I would recommend this book to those interested in reading about writing Poetry in a loose manner. It is not very rigid, and it is definitely not a “how-to” manual but nevertheless, it provides valuable insight into Poetry.

Thank you for reading my work! I hope you will return in the future!

-Alina

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How to Memorize a Poem in 4 Easy Steps