When I was in school, we children spent a lot of time memorizing quotes, facts, figures, and rules. It was tedious, and to be honest most of the time we memorized things for tests and then promptly forgot them. The exception to this rule were the poems. Even now, many years later, I can still remember the Jabberwocky, the Walrus and the Carpenter, some of Robert Frost's poems, Ozymandias, and others. Learning these poems helped me understand them better, and it also showed me how beautiful and powerful language can be.
Today's poetry title contains a selection of poems that are perfect for learning by heart.
Selected by Mary Ann Hoberman
Illustrated by Michael Emberley
Poetry Picture Book
For ages 7 to 12
Little Brown, 2012, 978-0-316-12947-3
Some people are of the opinion that learning poems by
heart is a tedious and dull thing to do. What is the point, they ask. Well,
learning a poem by heart helps you to better understand why the poet fashioned
the poem the way he or she did. One comes to appreciate how images and ideas
are fashioned using words, and how certain sounds, rhythms and rhymes conjure
up thoughts and feelings in us when we hear them.
For this book,
Mary Ann Hoberman has selected poems that are suitable for beginner readers and
for more advanced readers. Some are short, while others are longer. Some are
goofy and funny, while others have a more serious tone. The one thing that all
the poems have in common is that they are “memorable.” In other words the poems
are both “easy to remember” and “worth remembering.”
The book opens
with a word from Ann Hoberman and then she gives us a poem, telling us that we
are about to go on “an adventure.” She tells us that we are going to “invite”
the poems to live in a house in our heads that is called “Memory.” The beauty
of using this house is that it gets bigger the more you use it, and the more
you give it, “The more it will give.” Perhaps best of all, once the poems are
in your memory house, they will be there “As long as you live.”
The poems that
we first meet are very short. These special little gems will go into that memory
house easily. They include verses by Emily Dickinson, Edward Lear, and Robert
Lewis Stevenson. Then there are poems about people, people of all kinds. Robert
Frost’s poem A time to Talk reminds
us that one should always take time to have a “friendly visit” with a friend
who is passing by. In his poem Love That
Boy, Walter Dean Myers shows us how much a father loves his little son who
walks “like his grandpa / grins like his uncle Ben.” The father in the poem
knows in his heart that one day his son will be “a good man before he done.”
Next there is a
section of poems featuring animals. How could there not be. Children and
animals fit together as perfectly and peanut butter and jelly. There are poems
about a cat, a rooster, a dog, a pig, a bat, and even a yak. Some are
deliciously funny, while others have a more contemplative feel.
This
animal-centric collection is followed by poems about “Delicious Dishes,” time,
happiness, “Weather and Seasons,” sad feelings, “Strange and Mysterious”
things, and “Poems from storybooks.” Finally, there are a few poems that are
longer and more challenging to memorize. The author concludes by offering her
readers some tips on how to learn poetry by heart.
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