Jay Parini Has 16 Robert Frost Poems to Memorize

I had the benefit of having a non-stop string of excellent English teachers in middle and high school. In 8^th grade, Mrs. Leavell introduced us to Ernest Hemingway. Miss Roark in 9^th grade help a class of 35 boys discover Great Expectations, which turned out to be a great book for 14-year-old boys. Miss Campbell in 10^th grade helped us understand Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. In 11^th grade, when Mrs. Prince wasn’t celebrating Jacqueline Susann’s The Valley of the Dolls (which she did not have us read), she’d rhapsodize about Thornton Wilder’s Our Town and Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. And in 12^th grade, Miss Shorey guided 30 boys through the late 16^th century Spain of Don Quixote. 

As individual as they were, all my English teachers held one writer or poet in common esteem, the one considered the “American poet,” even when we studied world or English literature. This was the poet who, along with T.S. Eliot, all my teachers had studied when they were in middle and high school as well as college.

 

Robert Frost.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Chicago – poem by Carl Sandburg via Rabbit Rom Poetry.

 

Bend – poem by Jim Peterson at Good Life Review.

 

The Uncomfortable Art of Enjoying Poetry – Melissa Woodruff at Bandersnatch Books.

 

Poetry Prompt: Sink or Swim – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry. 

Cultivate – poem by Bethany Lee at Every Day Poems.

“30 Poems to Memorize (Before It’s Too Late)” by David Kerns

Writer David Kern tells us that memorization is about love and memory – love for the things we remember the most. My eight-year-old grandson can rattle off sports scores and statistics like the most experienced sports analyst, but then, he loves sports. My wife knows the lyrics to virtually every song from the British Invasion of the 1960s. I can remember daily itineraries for six visits to England, including the first one in 1983. Our own Sandra Heska King even memorized the 131-line “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

My 12^th grade English teacher had a slightly different view. She required that each of us in a class of 30 boys had to memorize at least one soliloquy by Shakespeare, because “you’re not educated unless you can recite a soliloquy by Shakespeare.” I chose the dagger scene from Macbeth, and I dutifully (as required) memorized it and recited it before the class. I still remember it today: “Is this a dagger which I see before me, / the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. / I have thee not, and yet I still thee still…” 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.