They Were Paid to Learn Poetry

By the time I was in kindergarten I knew Emily Dickenson's "I Never Saw A Moor" poem (aka "Chartless") by heart as well as Robert Frost's "Road Less Travelled" and "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening". 

My grandmother, an accomplished poet herself, made sure that I was versed in poetry. Driving in her Subaru through winding roads in the Blue Ridge Mountains, I would repeat each line a thousand times, committing it to memory, my young mind soaking it up.

My children were read poetry but I neglected the memorizing part of it. When they attended Waldorf school for two years, they suddenly had poems flowing out of them - rhymes and verses. And suddenly my heart ached to have them reciting more and more:

"He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin, 

A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;"    

- The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes

"On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye,

That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road runs by
To many-towered Camelot"     - The Lady of Shallot by Alfred Lord Tennyson

"It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul."  - Invictus by William Ernest Henley

I read the last stanza of Invictus in high school and promptly painted it on the wall in my bedroom so I could read it every day. I dreamed of old fashioned poetry readings at night with my children but life got busy and then busier and suddenly it seemed unattainable.

And then, my son surprised me by reciting a poem with such clarity and strength and such incredible memory that I actually teared up. His teacher told me that he was the one who carried the class in recitals of poetry and lines in plays and that he had an affinity for it that surprised her and I thanked my grandmother and grandfather for bringing that particular gift into the bloodline of our family.

So, my mother gave the children poems to learn and recite and she offered them a little money- $3 a poem upon recital. Since we always struggle financially, the children are always eager to earn a little cash and this was a win-win and they did beautifully.

One evening, we settled in and the children recited- Emily Dickenson, E.B White, Tennyson, Frost and many others having been given 5 poems each to learn months before. And then my son performed others that I had no idea he had learned and I sat on the edge of my seat and listened, wrapped by the force of the will in his words.

I wondered later why we had lost that- the gift of evenings full of reading out loud and poetry recitals. How our culture had bumped that off of the common evening activities list. Of how video games and movies and television are shaping the brains of our children instead of the words of books and poetry. Of how "OMG", "BFF" and "IMHO" have replaced our ability to speak clearly with full words and complete sentences and how we struggle at times to fill our words with meaning and beauty.

And I suddenly wished that I had spent more time caring about these things when the children were little. I wished that I had channeled my grandmother more and had them reciting poetry in the car. I wished that I had never forgotten the words to all the poems I had learned and that I had learned new ones. 

There is a void where they used to be, stanzas and lines coming to me on occasion but there is part of me that seems to be empty without a plethora of words to play with and revisit in my mind. 

Poetry does that- when you find the ones that speak to you, your life is richer and you have a secret joy as you run your tongue over the words like chocolates, tasting them and feeling the joy fill you up. 

Perhaps, I will make it my task to learn a new poem every few months, I have always loved The Forsaken Merman by Matthew Arnold. I would beg my mother to read over and over again to me because of the way she said, "Come dear, children, let us away, down and away below." 

Here's to honoring the magic of words and the way that magic can affect our culture, our world and our lives.