Thursday, May 8, 2014

The Lost Art of Memorizing Poetry


 
Pushkin reciting his poem before Old Derzhavin, Ilya Efimovich Efimovich Repin, 1911. 

In The American Reader, Nina Kang discusses The Lost Art of Memorizing Poetry.

Can it really be as simple as... modern poems are just harder to memorize?

1 comment:

Mike Finley ~ Big Vanilla said...

Yeah, we are still in a phase of reaction against the singsong rhymes of two centuries ago.

I also don't think what we are doing would qualify as poetry by old school rules.

We are all just doing our thing, thinking our thoughts, and it is very diverse and does not much lend itself to roundelays and sonnets.

Also, our attention spans are all shot.

Cited...

The poet doesn't invent. He listens. ~Jean Cocteau