> 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.)