Put It in Your Heart: Memorizing Poetry

When he teaches poetry classes, Billy Collins asks his students to memorize 14 lines of poetry. That the length of a sonnet. They can choose whatever poem they like—just learn 14 lines. You can imagine how much his students enjoy this assignment.

In our homeschool, we have a pretty strong rhythm of reading a poem aloud each day. We pick poems by the season or the month and read the same poem aloud each day. We choose ancient and contemporary, always something that I want banging around in my ears for a month. We have spent loads of time with Ursula K LeGuin, a fairly quirky selection in a high school syllabus. Here’s this month’s poem by the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh, the last of the school year. (The kids love the word claptrap!)

But we don’t memorize poems. There are no tests, no recitations. The children of course hold many lines in their memory even with our haphazard methods. We’ve read “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” at least twice. It’s a lovely way to ease into a new school year.

I can imagine no better way to inhabit the last season before I turn 50 than to really put this poem in my heart.¹

Ann Collins

calls this “the energy of poetry at work in the world.” And that’s something I want to be a part of.

Brian Funke

is leading people through this poem and on for a season of memorization. I’m not sure what other poems are in the queue, but I am committing to our dear Mr. Yeats.

1. Here’s the Bruce Cockburn song that I stole this line from.