Poetry and why I memorize it

This is a picture of my mother and my daughter headed back to the car after a couple hours of sledding. I was thinking about how lucky I am to have such a wonderful family. It was the first time that my kids have been sledding and while my daughter was running my mother and myself ragged, my son was more than content to sit and watch. And eat snow. He had a little difficulty as his thumbs were crammed in with his finger in his mittens. When I told my mother she immediately replied:

Thumbs in the thumb place,

Fingers all together.

This is the song we sing in mitten weather

When it's cold it doesn't matter whether

Mittens are wool, or made of finest leather.

Thumbs in the thumb place,

Fingers all together.

This is the song we sing in mitten weather.

I had to look this up. According to this website it is a song written by Rachel Buchman. I had never hear it before and knowing my mother she probably learned it from her childhood or just for the heck of it. Yes, this is my same mother that got me to appreciate math. Her professional training was in engineering, but she has always been an avid reader of literature, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. She could of completed an English lit minor with all the classes she took. She passed that love of reading down to us kids and I hope to pass it along to my children as well.

Returning to the topic I proposed, I was not always an advocate of memorizing poetry. When I was in 8th grade I told my English teacher that we should "Never memorize anything you can look up." She was not impressed. Not even when I mentioned that it was Albert Einstein that said that first. I can remember having to memorize two different poems between 8th and 9th grade. There may have been more but I can't remember them. I only succeed at doing one of them - "Old Ironsides" by Oliver Wendell Holms. The other one I was didn't memorize was "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley.

While I have always appreciated poetry, I didn't always see a need to memorize it. I grew up on Shel Silverstein, and Jack Prelutsky, as well as the large binder of poems that my mother had put together for a poetry class she had in college. My father enjoyed poetry as well, reading to us from Robert Service and Rudyard Kipling when we were camping. I enjoy the flow of language and the way poets will engage in "word smiting" to create images. I even wrote poetry while in high school and little in college. However, I never set out to actively memorize a poem.

I think the turning point for me in actually wanting to memorize poetry came with my children. My daughter used to suffer from acid re-flux and I would sing to her as she would try to fall asleep. I looked up the complete lyrics to "Scarborough Fair," I pulled out children and church song books, and even sang her songs that I had learned in Russian. I like to think that my singing helped her fall asleep, but I think it just helped me bond with her. What are songs but poems to music. The flame was lit.

Then my daughter came to the age of questions and wonder. She is still very much in this stage, but a couple of years ago, I remembered my mother reciting poems to us as we learned about the world around us. Whenever my wife made meatloaf I cursed that I didn't know the words to "My mother made a Meatloaf." or "The Turkey shot out of the Oven" when we had one in the oven ourselves. I wasn't completely hopeless when it came to poetry. Often, when she helped me with the dishes (I was the dishwasher for the most part), I would recite "If you have to Dry the Dishes" by Shel Silverstein. But I wanted more.

The last reason for wanting to memorize poems was my own personal enjoyment. I wanted to have words close to me. There is a rhyme and reason (pun very intended) to poetry that tends to resonate with me. When I see the sunrise I think of "The Morning Song in the Jungle" by Kipling. When I walk outside into the cold winter air I hear "The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill McKie" by Service. When my daughter is filled with insatiable curiosities I remember "I Keep Six Honest Serving Men" (Kipling again). When I watch my son grow and learn new things I ponder upon "If" (Kipling once more). And when I find myself in trial and tribulation, "Invictus" bears me up. Yes, I went back and did what I couldn't do in 8th grade.

And I am very glad I did.