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Are There Passages From Novels Or Poetry You Can Recite From Memory? (2/27/22)
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Marc
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Feb 27, 2022 08:01AM
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"Tiger, tiger burning bright in the forest of the night." I have no idea what poem it is from, but I somehow remember it from sophomore high school English - I was, and still am, struck by the image it creates in my mind. There are others but I know the poet so not as striking to me. Another line I remember from junior year in high school is the first line of a fellow classmate's Mansion Essay (all juniors had to write a research paper and 5 were chosen to be presented orally - no notes - at an evening event open to the public. It was - "The nauseating stench of the Auschwitz crematory ovens filled the air." It was the first thing that came to mind when I visited Auschwitz over a decade ago.
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"What immortal hand or eye could frame they fearful symmetry"
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I'm never sure if I can recall lines precisely. Other than the moldy Shakespeare declamations...Marilyn Hacker (from one of her first two collections, line break may not be correct)):
Try to treat boys like men, and they
turn into pigs.
From Samuel Delany's Dhalgren; opening line:
... to wound the autumnal city.
End of closing line:
I have come to
I agree with Hugh that music really helps. I can quote entire lyrics from a few songs, but am not very good at remembering even a line or two of poetry.There's one passage that is a favorite of mine that runs through my mind often. I probably don't always get it exactly right when I'm repeating it to myself, but it captures the feeling from the book and brings it back strongly to me. It had such an impact on me while reading, and then stayed with me as a lyrical reminder. From Toni Morrison's Beloved:
“Lay em down, Sethe. Sword and shield. Down. Down. Both of em down. Down by the riverside. Sword and shield. Don’t study war no more. Lay all that mess down. Sword and shield.”
While I can remember plots and details from books even those I read in my teens, I am useless at remembering quotes, first lines and poetry.
I am terrible at memorizing things like that. Except for, "So it goes." (Kurt Vonnegut) Lol. Perhaps it sticks with me because it's honestly so true and sums up so much with so few words.
I remember a few lines and quotes, both from fiction and poetry, that keep coming back to me with or without a reason, just like that. Eg;The moving finger writes, and having writ,
Moves on - nor all thy piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.
- Omar Khayyam
Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough,
A book of verse, a flask of wine - and thou.
Beside me singing in the wilderness,
And wilderness is paradise enow.
- Omar Khayyam
When I am sad and weary
When I think all hope has gone
When I walk along high Holborn
I think of you with nothing on.
- (Don't know the poet)
"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself transformed into a large vermin."
- opening lines of Kafka's Metamorphoses.
"Lolita - light of my life, fire of my lions. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta." (The rest of the line is muddled). Nabokov's novel opening line. And "you can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style."
And half a book worth of Urdu and Punjabi/Saraiki poetry which no one in here would understand or care about!
Gosh, this brings back memories.I first started memorizing whole poems when I was about 11 years old. I can remember it very vividly. It was in an English class and our teacher read Keats' 'Ode to a Nightingale' aloud to the class. It blew me away. I remember thinking I have never heard anything more beautiful. I didn't understand it, of course. But I loved the words. I spent the next couple of weeks memorizing the poem so I could call up the words any where and at any time.
I've been memorizing poems and Shakespearian sonnets ever since. I love reciting the words of my favorite poems when I go for a walk or putter about doing house chores. There's something about conjuring up the lines of a beautiful poem that I find very comforting. It's like visiting with an old friend.
"twas brillig and the slythy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe"
I can actually do the whole thing, but it's the only poem that ever stuck :)
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The two Shakespeare soliloquies I know by heart are Richard III (Now is the winter of our discontent) and MacBeth (Tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace). Again, edgy!
And I can still recite the first 18 lines of Canterbury Tales in Middle English, which I had to memorize for my high school English class.
And, Jibran, it's not so much not caring, I know of the cultural importance of Urdu poetry, but you're right that my sad monolingual self will never really appreciate it.
oh, and excusing my I'm sure terrible spelling "nel meso del camine de nostra vita me retrouvai nel un selva oscurra ou la derecha via erra smerata" Which was my motto in the deep dark days of my dissertation(Dante's Inferno, in the middle of the road of life I found myself in a a dark wood where the correct route was obscured)
In remembering quotes, my mind always go to - "The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there". Bits of poetry (Burns, Browning, and Wilfred Owen) stick in my mind from schooldays.
"What passing bells for those who die as cattle
Only the monstrous anger of the guns
Only the stuttering rifles rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons...."
I can't remember any words I read last week.
Whitney wrote: And, Jibran, it's not so much not caring, I know of the cultural importance of Urdu poetry, but you're right that my sad monolingual self will never really appreciate it."Yes, thank you. Lines from classical poetry are part of everyday speech and have a huge cultural import in Urdu as well as all languages of Arabic-Persian origin. That's why most native speakers know some lines/poems by heart and use them in everyday speech as the occasion demands. And lovers of poetry like myself go an extra mile when it comes to reading and remembering individual couplets or bits of longer poems that are beautiful and make a sudden impact.
Interesting topic. I remember having to learn and memorize the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet but can only remember bits and pieces of it now: Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
Most of what I remember is from the last two years of school - English A level with quotes from Othello & King Lear, Chaucer, Milton and a few others. At the same time, and for whatever reason I cannot recall now, I memorised a whole selection of short humorous verses - Ogden Nash and many others. One long poem called The Bath begins:Broad is the gate and wide the path
That leads man to his daily bath...
I can still quote it all over forty years later. For no good reason.
I think as a young boy I listened to a record of Stanley Holloway telling the story of The Lion and Albert and by listening so often, learnt it by heart. After that I enjoyed reciting verses at family gatherings.
