memorizing John Keats To Autumn. Why? I don't know. But I love the poem,
and I love having it memorized. Now I am endeavoring to learn a turgid
piece of prose for the Andrina McCulloch Public Speaking Competition, and
I am reminded of some of what I learned in that process. Here's some steps
and principles that were very effective for my brain:
- First, break it into chunks to learn separately, by general topic or
gist. I copied the poem into a word file, and added a double paragraph
break every time I felt a slight change of topic. This could happen after
several lines, or in the middle of a line.
- Next, make sure you understand the literal meaning of every word, and
every sentence, in the text. This gave me lots of unexpected rewards for
To Autumn, and made me realize I hadn't ever listened to it that closely.
For instance the line "where small gnats mourn among the river sallows", I
realized I had mentally interpolated "river shallows", like the shallow,
muddy part of the river. When in fact "sallow" is an old word for willow
tree! That makes a totally different image, which I find prettier.
- Beyond just the literal meaning, strive to get a vivid, specific mental
image of what each part is referring too. Google images is really useful
to this. For instance "barred clouds":
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2368/2327983768_194f6c7692.jpg?v=0
and until I found an image, I couldn't picture fruit hanging on "vines
that round the thatch-eves run" Of course it doesn't need to be an
accurate image, in fact it's probably better if it's an absurd one. The
important thing is to make a decision about what it means. I even drew a
little map for the second verse, deciding where I thought the granary was,
the half-reaped furrow, the brook, and the cider press. It should be an
extremely clear and complete picture, as striking as
possible, and accounting for every single non-abstract noun. Think not
just vision, but sound, touch, taste, and smell. I really don't take the time
to form mental images while I'm reading usually, but it's so
important for remembering.
- The whole basis of my learning it was to assume that no word was there
by accident, each word was absolutely essential and changed the meaning a
lot. So that played a part in the images I constructed. I tried to
exaggerate it so that every adjective and verb choice would seem even more
necessary, like "to swell the gourd", I pictured a squash inflating like a
balloon. (it reminds me a bit of "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote":
this approach to memorization is almost like setting you up to feel like
you are writing the poem yourself from scratch, and each word that comes
next is just the most obvious to capture your meaning) Try to get yourself
into the emotional headspace of the poem at each point, and greatly
exaggerate that too.
- Beside every chunk I wrote a couple of words trying to capture what that
part was about. For instance "sunset clouds" beside the chunk "where
barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day and touch the stubble plains with
rosy hue". The idea is to always be adding more and more funky structure
and meaning to the poem.
- If you have trouble remembering the order of the chunks, the ancient
"method of loci" works amazingly well. I know because I used it to
memorize the order of the 10 verses in bob dylan's desolation row. You
take your route to school, or some other route you know incredibly well,
and you attach each chunk subsequently to a landmark along that route.
While I was learning Desolation Row I literally taped verses to trees,
lampposts, and garbage cans. Then you can mentally trace the route, and it
will give you the order with perfect ease and certainty. It's even easy to
recite the chunks backwards: just mentally walk the route in reverse!
- Finally, there doesn't seem to be any substitute for drilling: going as
far as you can, or as good as you can, before referencing the source paper
again. After awhile I could drill myself without the piece of paper, just
saying it to myself, out loud or silently.
It takes a surprisingly long time to get every word right, but it's not
particularly hard work, and it's already brought me a lot of pleasure.
Once in a while I'll just recite it to myself while I'm washing my face or
riding my bike, like a mantra, enjoying making the mouth-shapes for the
words. I'm glad I have it this autumn, and hope I didn't learn it too old
to not have it for every autumn from now on.
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