It’s time to memorize some poems, people.
It’s been a crazy month full of death, love, worry, beauty, and joy. Now, life is at a roaring simmer or a roaring summer. (This is a poetry blog.) It’s time to memorize away.
I’ll have nice 20 hours in the car coming up this week, so that will be a prime way to have time to work on memorizing.
I shall start with Goatsucker by Sylvia Plath. How about you?
Old goatherds swear how all night long they hear
The warning whirr and burring of the bird
Who wakes with darkness and till dawn works hard
Vampiring dry of milk each great goat udder.
Moon full, moon dark, the chary dairy farmer
Dreams that his fattest cattle dwindle, fevered
By claw-cuts of the Goatsucker, alias Devil-bird,
Its eye, flashlit, a chip of ruby fire.
So fables say the Goatsucker moves, masked from men’s sight
In an ebony air, on wings of witch cloth,
Well-named, ill-famed a knavish fly-by-night,
Yet it never milked any goat, nor dealt cow death
And shadows only—cave-mouth bristle beset—
Cockchafers and the wan, green luna moth.
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I like this idea—and in the spirit of the word/image/idea of the “goat,” I will begin with one of my favorite poems, “Song” by Brigit Pegeen Kelley (about the boys who try to hack off the goat’s head).
Oh, I am impressed. That is a looong one. I thought about that one myself. Good luck!
I memorized “The Day Lady Died.” What a poem! The hard part for me was not the memorization–it was the breath control needed to get through all those errands and making that switch in the last stanza to “everyone and I stopped breathing.” I’m so glad you suggested it.
I did Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts.” I talk about my experience here: http://sherrychandler.com/?p=2281
Yes, I can see how breath control would be a challenging part of memorizing that poem. I had not thought of that before…interesting.