[lbo-talk] In Praise of Rote Memorization

[John Adams]

On Jan 28, 2006, at 7:38 PM, joanna wrote:

> Memorizing a poem is the surest way to discover its structure, 
> rhythms, colors, etc. Your mind will discover these as aids in 
> memorization, because every perceived pattern makes memorization 
> easier, so the mind looks for patterns.

I'll second this, and also note how similar the beginning of 
explicating a poem (at least, the way I learned it) is to how I learned 
to mark a script in acting class.

> It is also very interesting which poems are easy to memorize and which 
> are very hard. For example, "They flee from me, which sometime did me 
> seek/ With naked foot, stalking in my chamber...." is a poem that I 
> memorized mostly by reading through it, which allowed me to appreciate 
> Wyatt's grasp of the English language and its rhythms.

That is one of my very, very favorite poems in the world (how much do I 
like it? Someday, let me show you the variation I did of it), and 
somehow, it's slipped from my total memory.

>  A lot of Shakespeare's sonnets are very hard to memorize...for 
> different reasons.

Whereas I didn't find the ones I tackled all that hard (at the time--I 
don't have any of them in my head complete right now--which may mean 
you're closer to the mark than I am.)