On Memorizing Poetry

A great post I missed from Amanda:

The thing about remembering a poem, one line at a time, one word leading to another, anticipating when the next rhyme is coming around or where the line is about to break — the great thing about it is that it's a form of heightened concentration. It helps push other thoughts to the side. Almost as if the poem were a mantra, or a charm against "whatever it is that's encroaching" (to borrow a phrase from Charles Simic). Poetry sometimes seems to be quite close, even now, to its early roots in incantation, and I think memorization brings one near those roots. It certainly worked that way when I invoked Coleridge and Keats against the tedium of running. I've been having an unusually rough couple of weeks, and I'm finding that it still does. Now it's more likely to be Ashbery, or Stevens, or Bishop, or Yeats, but the fact that they're still there in my head is strangely encouraging.

The "memorize a poem" assignment in literature survey courses has been maligned by many as...I don't understand the specific objections, but I'm glad I was required to do it in high school and college.