.
| Hearsay: |
Nick Seddon accepted a challenge to learn, by heart, 100 poems this year. Which 100 would you learn if you were doing it?
When this summer I accepted the madcap challenge to learn 100 poems in a year, I certainly didn't imagine it would be a life-changing experience. Indeed, having never attempted anything remotely like this before – I got all the way through school and university without learning a single poem – I'm not really sure what I expected at all.
OK, I'll admit I rather liked the idea of taking poems into my mind as one might pluck apples from a tree, a sort of intellectual kleptomania. And because it was conceived of as a race, I guess there was also a tinge of macho competitiveness. And yes, I suppose it did cross my mind that reciting poetry would be a sly way to seduce the ladies.
But those shady motives feel rather redundant now. Six months ago a friend and I drew up a list of our favourite poems and having been going strong ever since. I am half way through, but I'm no longer doing this simply because I want to reach the end point. It's been all about falling in love with poetry again, and discovering it as if for the first time.
Who's in with me on this?
January 2006
December
2005
November
2005
October
2005
September
2005
August
2005
July
2005
June
2005
May
2005
April
2005
March
2005
February
2005
January
2005
December
2004
November
2004
October
2004
September
2004
August
2004
July
2004
June
2004
May
2004
April
2004
March
2004
February
2004
January
2004
December
2003
November
2003
October
2003
September
2003
August
2003
Bookninja © Copyright
The opinions expressed on this site are those of individual participants
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the site owners,
organizers, or other participants.
[powered by WordPress.]
November 30th, 2006 at 9:40 am
Here’s two:
“The Sunlight on the Garden” – Louis MacNeice
“anyone lived in a pretty how town” – E.E. Cummings
November 30th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Dude, I’m in. Trouble is, with my long-term case of short-term memory loss, by the time I’ve memorized the 100th, I’ll have fergot the previous 99. There’s only so much space on the ol’ hard drive y’know–and I permanently corrupted huge swaths of it in my teens and early twenties. I played Orsino in Twelfth Night about, shit, about 10 years ago; it’s been almost as long since I could remember any more than a smattering of the lines. And the duke had some good frigging lines, too. Same with the poem I wrote and memorized for the CBC Faceoff a couple of years ago. I remember a chunk of it, but then lose the thread about 10 lines in. I’m off-book for a few of my own poems that I’ve read to audiences a bazillion times, but I bet if I went a year without reading or reciting them, they’d get erased. Stupid brain! But I’d start with GM Hopkins’ “The Windhover”: “This morning’s minion, dapple-drawn dauphin” blah blah blah.
November 30th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
Anyone who wants to draw up a list with me, email me and we can all do it together. Might take me two or three years, but I’m sure there are about 100 out there I wouldn’t mind committing… poems, that is… to memory.
November 30th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
Here’s a couple:
“Zone: le Detroit” – Di Brandt
“The naked man’s last words” – John Ditsky
“A bear in bronze” – N. Scott Momaday
November 30th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
I mean several…here’s several…
I exceeded the couple limit by one…
November 30th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
Beowulf. I jest.
December 1st, 2006 at 11:11 am
If the one year isn’t a hard and fast rule, I’m in. I’d like to memorize the peoms I guiltily only half remember like Blake’s ‘The Tyger’ and Shakespeare’s #28, and ‘Love is Not All,’ a really lovely sonnet by Edna St Vincent Millay. Then I’d like to tackle some of the poems I’m familiar with only conceptwise and couldn’t begin to quote to you, like the Frost stuff.
December 1st, 2006 at 1:29 pm
“Neutral Tones” by Thomas Hardy.
December 1st, 2006 at 7:57 pm
I’m in. For a start:
Hopkins “Spring and Fall”
Yeats “When I am Old” and “Easter 1916″
Levertov “Tenebrae”
Stevens” Sunday Morning” and “The Idea of Order at Key West”
December 1st, 2006 at 10:51 pm
Christmas is coming, so we should memorize Dennis Lee’s “The Revenge of Santa Claus” and Ogden Nash’s “Santa Go Home.”
December 2nd, 2006 at 1:51 am
I’d be up for Prufrock and measuring life in coffee spoons
And “Green Eggs and Ham”..
Also “The Raven”
December 4th, 2006 at 4:53 am
For starters, ‘The Thought Fox’ by Ted Hughes, and yes I’ll say it, may be highly unfashionable – ‘Dover Beach’ by Matthew Arnold.
But I must say, reading other people’s suggestions has already inspired me to dip back into a few dusty anthologies on my own
shelves!