Getting a Little Crazy ...

We're all nuts, of course, in our own unique ways. People reading this know that there are moments when a video of what they're doing (or a transcript of what they're thinking!) would earn them a trip in a van with some guys in white coats.

I'll not write about those sorts of things (some of you, I know, are waiting to make that phone call on me).

Instead, I want to update you on something I've written about here before: my obsession with memorizing poems (and other literary passages--like the Gettysburg Address).

It started when I was a kid--and the teacher asked me (4th grade?) to memorize “A Visit from St. Nicholas" to recite at a Christmas program. I did--even though I wasn't really too sure of the meaning of that "dry leaves" and "hurricane fly" stuff. Anyway, I liked having that poem in my head--and it's still there. I like to recite it at the table on Christmas.

A few high school teachers asked us to memorize things, too. When I was a senior, our English teacher, Mrs. Davis, required us to memorize "When I Was One-and-Twenty" by A, E. Housman. (Link to the poem.) I'm pretty sure I didn't know what rue meant at the time, but I understood it when I got my grade on the quiz.

Years later, Mrs. Davis (wherever you are), I learned it, cold.

I started having my 8th graders memorize poems in the 1980s, and by the time I retired in 1997, they were learning a dozen pieces a year (three/marking period), including "The Road Not Taken," a Shakespeare sonnet ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" or "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"). I learned them with the students--made it much easier to grade the quizzes!

In 2001 I returned to teaching--Western Reserve Academy (a few blocks from our house)--and my juniors had to learn about a dozen pieces a year, as well,

I'd soon grown bored of the same old sonnets and poems, so while they were learning the ones I'd assigned, I learned something else by the same poet.

Pretty soon, I was nearing 100 pieces, and when I realized that, I learned a few more, got to 100, and on November 8, 2010, I gave a talk to the student body in the Chapel about my "accomplishment." I ended the talk with a silly poem of my own--about learning 100 poems. (I've pasted it at the bottom of this post.)

But here's the cursed thing about it: I couldn't stop at 100. On I went: 125, 150, 175, 200, 225. I'm now at 229 and am looking around for something to get me to 230, at which point I can, of course, stop.

Not.

The problem now, of course, is not learning the poems; it's keeping them in my memory. And that requires practice.

I used to tell my students when I introduced the (not-so-popular) assignment of memorizing that they would remember the poems--but only if they wanted to. You need to run through the damn things in your head now and then.

In my case, a lot of running. I do all of them--yes, all of them--several times a week: some when I walk to to the coffee shop, some at the coffee shop, some on the way home, some in the shower in the morning, some as I'm getting dressed, some at the health club while I'm exercising, some on the way out to the health club ... you get it.

To my fellow sufferers at the health club, I'm the Old Weird Guy Who Mumbles When He Walks His Laps (and Rides His Exercise Bike) (and Rows on the Machine) (and Lifts Weights).

Oh, I do a couple in the health-club shower, too ("Casey at the Bat," "Jabberwocky").

By the way, just about the only audience for my "knowledge" is Joyce, who does like to hear them (or, at least, has convincingly convinced me that she does). I reel off some for my grandsons now and then. They seem to understand they have a weird grandpa--which is why they've always called me "Silly Papa," to distinguish me from their other grandfather, who is just "Papa." (As our grandsons have aged--they're now 14 and 10--they have settled on "SP" for me.)

Anyway, that's one of the (more than) several ways I'm a bit loony. But I do love my tunes ...

* Here's a weird thing. In the image at the top of this post, lifted from Google, are lines from actual poems--and all of them I've memorized!



100 Poems
(pronounce poems as pomes--one syllable)

Oh, you can have your Londons,

Your Parises, your Romes,

And you can have your Hudsons, too,

’Cuz I got all them poems!

Yeah, some of them are sorta short,

But some: enormous tomes—

And I have got a hundred now,

A hundred freakin’ poems.

Now you might think it’s awfully hard

To cram inside your domes

So many lines, so many rhymes,

So many famous poems.

But it doesn’t take an Einstein—

Require a Sherlock Holmes—

It takes no Stephen Hawking

To learn a hundred poems.

(If Dyer can do it, that old man,

Then you can do it, Homes—

Just get a book, and take a look,

And pick some purty poems!)

No, it’s no harder than it is

To drink a drink that foams—

All you need is to decide:

“I wanna learn some poems!”

You copy/paste one on a card—

A sort of mobile home—

You take it with you everywhere,

Your precious little poem.

And soon … like we have Hudson, and

Alaska has its Nome,

And Canada its Winnipeg,

You have got your poem!

 

You then take newer cards along

Wherever your heart roams,

And soon, before you know it,

You’ve got one hundred poems!

Now that I’ve got that hundred,

Perhaps you think I’m done?

But I have got another card—

It’s time for one-oh-one!

Yes, there are strange diseases, and

Some stranger sick syndromes,

And I still suffer from the worst—

Memorizing poems!

But there’s a simple message that

I wish here to impart:

That what you’ve truly learned in life

Lies anchored in your heart.

The ancients knew it; I have learned it—

One of life’s best guides:

An educated mind and heart:

True wisdom there resides.