Sea and Poem Fever

I’ve now committed my third poem to memory and the pleasure continues to grow - not lessen. I wondered if after I’d learnt the first poem my motivation would diminish and it would become something I had no interest in continuing to do, in which case I would stop. But its not like that. I keep wanting to learn another.

Sea Fever has been a pleasure to learn. It is such a rhythmic and rhyming poem that saying it is a lot like singing. And I’ve taken to reciting in the shower as well as while walking.

It’s a poem I have been familiar with for some time but being familiar with and committing it to memory are not the same thing. Memorising is a very detailed process and involves paying attention to minute details whereas’ being familiar with’ is more an overall sense of knowing but not necessarily being able to recall more than a few words or a line or the general meaning of the poem.

I’d been wondering if over time the poems I’ve learnt would fade from my memory and become hard to remember - or even forgotten - and although its only a short time since I learnt my first poem that has not actually happened and I suspect it won’t. They seem to have stuck fast and are staying in my memory. The test will be to try reciting a year or more after learning. I will be curious to see how my memory does then. However I am conscious of a point in the learning process where they seem to ‘sink’ into my body and become part of me rather than a separate thing. Its at that point that I think ‘I’ve got it and it won’t get away’.

I’m learning Charles Bukowski’s ‘The Laughing Heart‘ and almost have that memorised. My next poem will be the first lines of Dante’s Inferno but I’ve not decided on the translation yet. Not all are available online so I may have to go to the library to get the one I want.