For my first poem, I’ll memorize “Ozymandias” by Percy Shelley. Steve Schroeder memorized that last year and mentioned it this year on my blog. He gave me the idea.

I’m a bit behind in the process. I’ll catch up though.

How about you? What do you plan to memorize this month?

See this post about memorizing poetry and see this list of favorite poems (a list made by you, dear readers) for poems you may wish to memorize.

Who’s in this year? Please post in the comments with a link to your blog if you’ll participate, and I’ll make a big, fat list of participants.

Here are the two rules:

1. One poem per week…how difficult can that be?

2. One poem can be shorter than 10 lines. Ideally, the others should be longer than 10 lines.

Two rules and four poems in month…easy, aye?

If you’re in, let me know in the comments.

Towards the beginning of September, we can all share the titles we want to memorize. I hope to discover poems I’ve not read before or don’t know well.

—-

September will HAVE to be better than August. It just will have to happen that way.

—-

We went to the beach this past weekend with friends. It was “Gay Week” and “Bike Week” in Rehoboth. Everywhere we went, we heard the roar of Harley Davidsons. I read that HD tried to trademark the Harley “sound.” I wondered if I could teach O to recognize it.

—-

DH, O, and I visited Wolf Neck State Park in Rehoboth. We walked a good way before we saw the sign: “No Shooting on Sundays.” It was Saturday. Did that mean we could get shot by a hunter? I felt wary.

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.

While we’re on the topic of September’s challenge, what shall we call the month? The word “memorize” or “memorization” is quite a mouthful. Some ideas:

National Memorize Poetry Month (so we could call it NaMePoMo a la National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo))

Memorize Poetry Month (perhaps a bit bland)

The 30-Day Poetry Challenge (not very specific)

What other ideas do you have?