If yes, which poems did you learn? If no, do you thing it should be a thing?

36 comments

  1. I don’t know about now, but we had to memorize pieces when I was in school. (Two would be the prologue from the Canterbury Tales (Jr high), and the funeral speech from Julius Caesar, which we took turns doing in HS.)

    In terms of more modern poems, we’d have been more likely to be asked to read and analyze them than to learn them by rote.

  2. That is not common. I think I had to do it one time?

    I do like to memorize prose or poetry now as an adult though.

  3. I had to, but I don’t know if it’s common. We got to pick which one in the class materials we memorized. The poem had to be within a certain length.

  4. Private school—every year and additionally for classes. Always that one kid in the class that went all in and won every year.

  5. Sadly, no. I memorized so much poetry and prose when I was in school- but I do not think our kids have had to memorize anything beyond lyrics for school musical performances.

    They do not even take a lot of spelling tests, either.

  6. In my Catholic school yes, we had to do the Canterbury tales first 25 lines or so

  7. The only time I remember having to memorize a poem was sophomore year of HS having to memorize the intro to Romeo & Juliet. “Two houses both alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we may our scene…”

    Iambic pentameter, bitch!

  8. In 5th grade in the 80s we had to memorize poems and recite them in front of class. I only remember 2 poems. One was about a snake that goes past your foot and it smiles at you. That’s all I can remember of that one. The other poem is “Table Manners” which I still remember 30 something years later.

    The Goops they lick their fingers

    The Goops they lick their knives

    They spill their broth on the tablecloth

    Oh, they lead disgusting lives!

    The Goops they talk while eating

    And loud and fast they chew

    And that is why I’m glad that I

    Am not a Goop, are you?

  9. Not common. We study some poetry at the High school level but there was no reason to memorize. However, I do recall that I once had an assignment to rewrite Poe’s “The Raven” using the same rhyme scheme. Had that one stuck in my head for years.

  10. It was common when I was in high school in the 70s, but I’ve been teaching English for 30 years and have never assigned memorization.

  12. I remember reading lots of poetry for English lit, but the only one I recall not reading off a card was Eclipse by Pink Floyd.

  13. It’s more common in private Christian schools with traditional curricula, but not public schools.

    Many public schools expect kids to know the Pledge of Allegiance though.

  15. I was given an assignment in high school to memorize the prologue of *The Canterbury Tales*, but that was the only time I was asked to memorize a poem. I refused to do it and quite performatively in front of the whole class took a zero. I still think it was a ridiculous waste of time with no educational value whatsoever. Sure, *The Canterbury Tales* has enormous historical importance, as it was one of the earlier books written in Europe in a local vernacular as opposed to Latin. That’s great. And it’s not a bad read either. But to this day I still don’t understand why it’s a thing to have students memorize the prologue.

  16. I did back in middle and high school. I can still recite The Jabberwocky in its entirety some 25 years later.

    We also had speech class in high school so we had to memorize a couple scenes from plays.

    The absolute best one anyone did was the scene from Pulp Fiction where Jules executes the guys. There couldn’t be any swearing so he memorized the whole thing with PG language.

    “Does Marsellis Wallis look like a dog?”

    And

    “Say what again mamma jamma, I dare you.”

    It was epic. The kid went on to be a director and editor. Suits him well.

  17. I had to do it a few times. Can’t remember what the were since it was 16+ years ago. I do not think that it should be a requirement.

  18. We had to study and write poetry but were never expected to memorize it. The two poets that I remember best were poe and Robert frost.

  19. The only thing we had to do in my high school was memorize a monologue from Shakespeare my freshman year.

    As you would expect, most people chose either “Romeo, Romeo” or “Friends, Romans, Countrymen.” I know one person chose “Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow” and I think I chose “What’s he then that says I play the villain?” from Othello.

    We did a *lot* of analysis of poems and prose, but not rote memorization as far as I can remember. That said, I was in Honors/AP English so the non-Honors/AP courses may have been different.

  20. Maybe once or twice throughout my entire education.

    I was allowed to choose the poem. I was too young to appreciate it at the time but there’s some fire poetry I’ve discovered over the years.

    I think high schoolers should have some freedom to explore poems and expound on them as a small presentation. At least some curriculum to break the cliche that they’re stiff and boring.

  21. We definitely did not. There’s no national or state standards on hardly anything. Most of the poems I knew in school were written by Andrew Dice Clay.

  22. “Oh Captain, My Captain,
    Our fearful trip is done,
    The ship has weathered every rack,
    The prize we sought is won,
    The port is near, the bells I hear,
    The people all exalting,
    While follow eyes the steady keel,
    The vessel grim and daring.
    But Oh Hark, Hark, Hark,
    Oh the bleeding drops of red,
    While on the deck my Captain lies,
    Fallen, cold and dead”

  23. I (45f) remember memorizing quite a few poems from elementary school through highschool. We also studied a lot of plays, not just Shakespeare. My 20yro son…I can’t say he ever had to memorize a poem and I am not sure he ever he had to read a complete play. Schools have moved more towards STEM studies and by middle school kids can chose a lot of their classes. Poetry may have been an option but he never took it. His last 3 years were dominated by AP science and math classes. He had AP english but that seemed to focus on writing papers, proper sourcing, formatting, citing etc. Sadly poetry is largely not a thing in America. Mostly a small niche.

  24. I did in the 80s and my daughter did this year.
    “Reflections on Ice-Breaking” by Ogden Nash:
    Candy
    Is dandy
    But liquor
    Is quicker

  25. In my high school english class, we had to recite the the first stanza of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. You got double credit if you did it in Middle English. I can still recite about 2/3 of the lines

    >Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
    The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,

  27. Not when I was in school. I do not remember doing that in K-12 or college.

  28. When I was a kid we did in 4th and 5th grade but my schooling was a little bit untraditional.

    I remember doing I wandered lonely as a cloud by wordsworth.

  30. I remember it, and I remember hating it. I realize a lot of people really like poetry and I respect that, but I could not then nor can I now ever slightly get into it.

  31. We did that in second grade and 7th grade, but it’s pretty common in the younger ages (6-8). I think it’s supposed to help with working memory since poems are short, and improve focus rather than because you need to know that specific poem. My second grade teacher had us do a poetry slam to which our parents were invited (all shel silverstein) and I memorized 2 poems. In 7th grade we had a poetry unit where we had to find a poet, do a little research project and recite one of their poems allowed from memory

  32. Yes. I had to memorize Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”. I might have in elementary/jr. high, but I don’t rightly recall.

  33. Poems? Not really. Songs, yes, like the “Fifty Nifty United States” as a tool for memorizing the names of all 50 states (in alphabetical order, no less; this is probably why DC and Puerto Rico will never become states, because Big Song™ can’t come up with a good rhyme for 51 or 52), but not poems.

    Some schools you had to memorize speeches. The [Gettysburg Address](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address) is a pretty common one. Some people memorized [JFK’s Address at Rice University](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_choose_to_go_to_the_Moon) (“we choose to go to the moon”).

    We did do poetry reading, though. I remember a class assignment where we researched the life of a poet of our choosing and had to recite a poem of theirs, but it didn’t need to be memorized.

    The only time you really had to memorize anything was for speech club.

  34. Not a poem, but I had to memorize the first page/paragraph (depending on the version of the book) of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

  35. Not really for me, but there were a lot of rhymes in elementary school to memorize things like the months of the year, days of the week, planets in the solar system, various classroom rules, etc.

  36. In high school (class of 93) I had to memorize Poe’s “The Raven” , part of Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha” and “Paul Revere’s Ride” there were others that I don’t remember now.

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