It didn’t quite rise to a poetry slam but sophomore year in high school my friend Terry and I had an ongoing Beatles versus Dylan argument. If I left a notebook or homework unguarded he’d write Beatle lyrics all over them (“she loves you yeah, yeah, yeah”) and I’d do the same with Dylan lyrics if I could get a hold of his stuff (“the ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face”). In case you think of us as being pretty sophisticated, our other big argument was who would win in a fight – a bear or a gorilla (btw, the bear would most definitely win).
That got me thinking about memorization. My mom knew dozens of poems by heart but by the time I was in school the only things we memorized were the Gettysburg address, the preamble to the Constitution, and, for some reason, the capital cities in South America. Not sure if today’s students memorize anything.
Something there has been lost. The magic in poetry is in hearing someone speaking it. And, in honor of April being National Poetry Month, here are some spoken poems. Feel free to pick one and memorize it!
The Summer Day by Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver (1935-2019) was an American poet and author who often used nature as an allegory in her poems. The Summer Day is probably her most famous poem.
This recording is Mary Oliver herself reciting The Summer Day.
Sonnet 29 by William Shakespeare
Sonnets are fourteen line poems, often in iambic pentameter (ten syllables per line, every other syllable stressed). Shakespeare would break his sonnets into quatrains (four line stanzas) with a final rhyming couplet. Sonnet 29 has two stanzas full of bemoaining followed by the last stanza and the couplet revealing the healing power of love.
This is Dame Judith Dench reciting Sonnet 29.
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ozymandias is also a sonnet, although it doesn’t hold fast to all of the conventions. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), whose second wife was Mary Shelley of Frankenstein fame, wrote it about Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II, whose Greek name was Ozymandias. Shelley died at the age of 29 in a boating accident.
This is Sir John Gielgud reciting Ozymandias.
Kubla Kahn by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Coleridge (1772-1834) was one of the Lake Poets, a friend of William Wordsworth. He battled a lifelong opium addiction.
My friend Roland got his PhD thesis on Coleridge. While in the Harvard library paging through a Coleridge notebook he suffered a paper cut and bled on the paper. This led to a panic in the library and they had to find a notary to mark it so subsequent scholars wouldn’t think it was Coleridge’s blood.
This is the Coleridge poem Kubla Kahn, or a Vision in a Dream recited by Sir Ian McKellen.
The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
Alfred Noyes (1880-1958) was a poet at the turn of the 20th century famous for romantic, narrative poems. The folk artist Phil Ochs thought Noyes’ poem The Highwayman was so lyrical that he added a melody and sang the entire poem.
This is Phil Ochs singing the poem The Highwayman.
In Flanders Fields by John McCrae
This poem refers to the many lost in the battlefields in Belgium in World War I.
Although it’s slowly falling out of fashion, this is why you see poppy donations in front of stores, usually around Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day. This poem is made all the more poignant by the fact that the author, Canadian physician and soldier John McCrae (1872-1918), did not survive the war.
Song of Divination by Li Zhiyi
This is a poem by the Song dynasty poet Li Zhiyi (1048-1117). Chinese poems don’t often translate well because the rhyme and cadence is lost in the conversion to English.
The Chinese put a lot of effort to maintain both the “englishness” and the “meaning” when converting words from English to Mandarin. For instance, Coca Cola is translated as 可口可乐 (kě kǒu kě lè). This roughly sounds like Coca Cola and, also roughly, translates to “tasty fun.”
Here is the Li Zhiyi poem Song of Divination, recited both in Mandarin and English. Apologies for the schmaltzy background music.
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) is the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
Here is a recitation of his nonsense poem Jabberwocky, which was included in Through the Looking Glass.
