When my dad died in 2019, we were flooded with condolences on Facebook. But there was one thing that permeated so many of them: a few lines of poetry that well-wishers included from various poems they had memorized in Dad’s high school English class, while proudly emphasizing, “I can still recite these lines today, thanks to Mr. Cloud.”
My dad insisted that his students memorize poems together as a class. He’d say: “Repeat after me. ‘Margaret are you grieving over golden grove unleaving?’”
No doubt there was a little uneasiness at first among the self-conscious teenagers, but Dad had a way of getting every student in his classroom to participate.
Before long, they were standing on their chairs shouting: “Ride a wild horse/With purple wings striped yellow and black/Except his head which must be red!“
What Dad knew that his students didn’t was that there is an intangible beauty to … [continue reading...] about How To Memorize A Poem
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