How To Memorize A Poem
86For a while in my career I was known as the person who could perform from memory poems of any length. On two days notice for instance I was able to perform, in its entirety, Allen Ginsberg's "Howl." That performance took 45 minutes! People thought I had some sort of amazing memory. In fact the secret was this almost mechanical technique which allowed me to commit huge amounts of text to memory. If what you want to memorize is long the process can be a grind and tests your commitment to the project. But for shorter works it is amazingly quick and easy.
Step One: Read the poem to yourself (not outloud)
Step Two: Now read only the first line of the poem outloud. Take your eyes from the page and immediately, outloud, say the line again. Glance quickly to make sure you got it right. If you made a mistake, do it over. Now move on to the second line and repeat the procedure- one outloud reading followed by one outloud recitation of the line from memory. Do this for every line in the poem (in order, I guess it goes without saying).
Step Three: Once you have completed going through the poem, go back to the beginning. This time read outloud the first two lines, look away and repeat them outloud. Check briefly that you got it right. If you make a mistake do it over. Now move on to the next two lines and so forth going through the poem two lines at a time.
Steps Four thru Seven: Repeat the process three lines at a time, then 4 lines at a time, then 5 and then 6. I have found that by the 6th pass, no matter how long or short the poem, you will have the whole thing committed to memory. At some point in this process you will find that you are able to recite the whole poem without hardly a glance at the poem. I recommend doing all six passes even if you already seem to have the poem down before then.
Step Eight: Recite the whole poem, preferably just before you go to bed at night.
Step Nine (IMPORTANT): Stop thinking about the poem and just sleep on it. Your sleeping mind is very important for memory- it sort of saves to your brains harddrive what has been floating around in its RAM while it worked through the poem.
The next day you should find (perhaps with a little glance at the first line of the poem to kidkstart your memory) that you can recite the whole poem. Now recite the poem once more, to yourself with meaning! Depending on when you want to perform the poem you may want to recite it once a day or every couple of days before your performance. You have mechanically memorized the text, now is your opportunity to explore the poem and all its hidden meanings and connections without needing the text in front of you.
Note: This memory may fade over time, if you do not give it a run through every so often. I couldn't recite "Howl' straight through now if you asked me to. Give me a day or two.
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Hi I am only 11 years old and I have to do a prefomance in rivers for poems and this really hepled me thx
jordan
Hi yah srry but i am thinking that i have to memorise three poems and would i do the exacte some thing u know what rocks i get to miss school yah
Jordan again
srry would u use music to help u conetrate(questoin mark)
Thanks for the comments, guys. Jordan, it should work for three poems as well. I don't know about music helping you concentrate, I never tried it...let me know.
by tommorow i have to memorise a poem...it's only 8 lines...but it's in german. I have been practicing for 20 mins each day for a week, and i tried your method only today, but i can't get it to work.
please help, what else can i do?
Very good method! It works well for long poems.
I don't know what you people are smoking unless you spent days or several hours doing this...I just tried the for the past 2 hours and I still cannot memorize more than 10 lines.
Great method! I've always doubted those who say " read the first line, then lines 1&2, then 1, 2 & 3 etc." It seems you'd get an uneven coverage :P
I tried so many methods! Nothings working! This actually helped though, thank's!
I tried so many methods! Nothings working! This actually helped though, thank's!
i had to memorize a poem in a day (Petals by Amy Lowell) and this helped! thanks!!!
I have to memorize The Road Not Taken for school, This is helping, but only a little...
This method is really good. I have to recite a poem tomorrow, so we'll see how well I know it then.
Then we'll know if the method really worked.
This method is great, I used it twice and it worked perfectly both times.
This approach makes memorizing so easy - Thank you, J. J.!
I've combined your memorization technique with some recall techniques, and put them all together a web app for memorizing pieces word for word called Verbatim, available online for free:
http://members.cox.net/astonishment/iphone/webapps
It runs on: iPhone, iPod Touch, Palm Pre, Android devices, and WebKit-based browsers (such as Safari and Google Chrome).
The "related resources" section of the manual also links to your article, and I mention it (and yes, link to it) repeatedly in the video tutorials:
thank you so much! i have to memorize the poem IF by tomorow and its a huge poem! im gonna try this so thank you :]
Thanks this is a great method it really helped!!!!
I had to memorize the poem "The Night Before Christmas" for school and this method really helped alot.Thank-You alot for sharing this method with us.
im trying to memorize youth i do adore thee by william shakespeare so far this is working prety good
thanks
im going to try this wish me luck!
umm wow this kinda takes a while .. im not done yet keep wishing me luck =)
im going to try this for a 30 line poem... wish me luck!! :D
man i have to memorize a poem called cremation of sam miggie and its three pages long and im only in grade 8 and i have a day to do it HELP!
i know this is random but ps3 rocks and who ever wants to add me on it my name is poointhetoilet no spaces bye
Wow thanks! I'm a Junior and I'm asked to memorize 5 stanzas from a book (with deep words XD). With this method, I think I can do it. But the recitation itself is on Thursday (the day after tomorrow). Wish me luck!
combined with linking visual images and mapping the images onto places in space (e.g. within a house) this works very well.
im going to try it on a 22 line poem in Ukrainian
I hope it helps thx
Me again i ment 24 line wish me luck
SORRY IM SOO LATE but that helped me sooooo much!!! thanks alot!!!
Superb method!!! I can now recite Have you ever by Gillian Healey
this method worked GREAT!!!! I used it to memorize a bible chapter today, verse references and all! I'm going to combine it with the spaced repetition method: recite once a day for a week, once a week for a month, then once a month for life!!! I could use this method to memorize at least a chapter a day I think!!!!! Do it!!!!
P.S. I also bought a digital voice recorder so I can record and then play to myself what I memorized at night before I sleep!
this method is very, very helpful. thank you very much. I have memorized countless poems, passages, essays, answers, etc. thanks to this method. thank you very much, I really appreciate it.
hi,sorry but i need 2 memorize champion by carman which is SSSSSSSOOOOOOO long in JUST ONE HOUR
xrry but it didn't help much but good
hi,sorry but i need 2 memorize champion by carman which is SSSSSSSOOOOOOO long in JUST ONE HOUR
xrry but it didn't help much but good
O my god!I needed to memorize three pages and I was done in just 20 minutes!Thank you who ever wrote this!
how can i memorize a poem as soon as them it will take me lotz af time to do it...........
Omg so i just stumbled across this page and i really hope this works! im doing A Dream within a dream and my grade depends on this!!!!
omg, thank you so much!
I have to memorize Alexander Pushkin's "Winter Morning" in Russian and the poem is like so long! But, this is helping me so much! Thanks :)
Dude I had to recite 2 page poem and I memorized the whole thing in 2 nights all because of ur steps
Thanks:)
Michael
Thank you so much!
I was working on this poem for school and I had finally gotten it memorized. I could say it backwards, forwards, and upside down. Then when I tried to repeat it an hour later, I could hardly remember a word. But after I used this method, I could remember it a lot better. Thanks.
I need to memorize five stanzas (20 lines) of German!
I'm gonna die...
Thank you to whoever wrote this.I need to have a poem memorized for school tomorrow and I almost have it down pat.Thank you so much.
OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS WORKS REALLY! I HAD SO MUCH TROUBLE MEMORIZING SOME LINES AND THIS HELPED A LOT. IF PEOPLE ARE CURIOUS MY TEACHER TOLD US TO MEMORIZE THE POEM IF by RUDYARD KIPLING.
thank you so much whoever wrote this.
ummm i looked at my poem (bad memory) and i didnt know how to do it...and i still havent its really hard to memerize just one line... :(
i will try this.... :) sounds like it works from all the positive comments.
I have to memorize a page from a book I love. The problem is that the font on the book is really small. I have to memorize it for the day after tomorow so I will try it and see how it goes. I am only 11 too.
I need to memorize a poem in two days!
I'm only ten years old.
I have a competition for poems after tommorow, it consisted of 40 lines and I couldn't memorize the longest two, but your method helped me a lot, in only ten minutes, so thank you!
I have to memorize "The Old Woman of the Road". I'm only 10 going on 11 but I will try your method. It looks really great!
PRAY TO GOD THIS WORKS. I NEED THIS TO WORKK
Thanks so much! I had to memorize a poem in one night and this helped sooooooooooooooooo much!!!! :)
Thanks!
My poem is a Crocodiles Toothache and I can not get how people memorize a poem so fast but I have to present the poem tomarrow and I am soo nervous can you please HELP ME !! I am like having a nervous break down .
hey there,
it seems this method works but Ill try it on a 30 line poem.
I'm a freshman in highschool and I have to have "Kubla Khan" memorized and ready for recitation by tomorrow. Ugh. Imma try your method. I hope it works. And if not, wel, thanks anyway.
Thanks for the tips! I have to memorize 2 Chinese poems for my Chinese class, and this is helpful. I'm only 11. I'm not good at memorizing, so I'll try this method. Thanks again! :)
thanks! Helped me heaps! And i mean heaps... :)
Great method! :) I memorized "shall I compare thee to a summer's day" in about one hour. Now I'm going to do "The Raven," just for kicks, which will undoubtedly take a while... :)
I hav to memorize a Phoenix and a turtle by shakespeare, and if this strategy works I will b back to thank u
omg it actually work i got a 97 on my three page test by robert frost
I have to memorize a 45 line poem. Hope this works!!!
Your method is a godsend for PUA's. Thank you.
Hey is it possible to write the lines down instead of saying them?
I had to memorise a 20 line poem in just half an hour (I am only 12) and I found it incredibly hard the next I had to do it again but I had done some reaserching and found this technique the next I used it and aced it!!!
xxx Rose
p.s. It was an exercise we had to do to build up to memorising Shakespare (not all of it but a fare amount of it).
thanks im 13 and had to recite the opening lines to the declaration of independence and thanks to you method i memorized the opening in 10-15 minutes
This helped me SO much! Thank you thank you thank you!!
this stuff works so good!!!!
man i thanx to whoever wrote this i had a matter of reputation but now i will b able to memorise . thankx for the tips champ and i am only 13
I have to memorize the prologue of the Canterbury Tales in Middle English and this is helping me so very much. Great method!
This is brilliant!
I have to memorize a road not taken for my 8th grade english class and this looks like it might work!
OMG! it totally worked. I memorized it in 20 minutes and still remembered it the next day! I've now got it memorized a month before I have to recite it. Thanks so much!
I just memorized Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein in about 40 minutes. Took me longer than other people here, it seems, but it's very handy, and will work well for me learning the lyrics to songs for while I learn the guitar.
Thanks for this, and to everyone unsure about it, stick with it, everything clicks and comes good all of a sudden and it's an amazing feeling. :)
Wow this even works for a French poem (Déjuner du matin)!
awesome. works great
i like this method alot! but for me it kinda of gets me used to the words but not know it kind of...but i had to memorize 56 lines of Paul Revere but it might be the way i learn because when i started typing the 4 lines and what not on my computer and saying it and then deleting it and retyping it and that helped me a little more
this works great but somwwtimes u have to do the line thing twice
I have to memorize a 10-line poem in Spanish by the end of the week, and so far this is helping! Thank you so much!
thank u so much this helped me alot in school.i had to memorize a visit from st.nicholas in one day now i can be in the schools wiinter program.(: :P.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! thank u!!!!!!!!!
you guys have it easy i have to recite stanza 1&2 of the raven
I'm trying to memorize the Raven for my sixth grade English class. We were supposed to memorize a poem that was at least ten lines, and I'm really ambitious, so I chose the raven. (108 lines) I've got it all down but the last two stanzas, but I wish I had found this earlier. It really works. Thanks!
UGH , This Was So Much Help I Love This It Really Does Help !
We have to memorize the poem "If" in my A-1 class. I want to get 105% but i have to say it tomorow!!! Your tip has helped a LOT! It took me a weeek to remember the Poem "Road Not Taken" and "Stoping By Woods on a Snowy Eveing" Now maybe my crush will notice me!!!
Wow thank you! Im going to use this to memorise This Shore-Tom Milsom and maybe use it to learn my lines for my drama production in the summer \m/
working well!!!
Thank's to the guy who posted this! I almost gut flunked in English class.
Thank's to the who wrote this. It really helps a lot. Thank's again for taking your time to share this to us.
Thank's to the guy who wrote this. It works really well. Thank's again to spend your time to post this online.
Steven 4 years ago
holy crap this method dominates.
Thank you so much o whoever wrote this.
i had to memorize a few pages from a mid summers night dream by shakespeare and i aced it.
again, thank you.