On any day of the week, you can enter my classroom and my students will be reciting poetry. If we aren't learning a new poem, we're practicing and discussing a previous poem. By the end of the year, each student has a minimum of twenty poems memorized that they will carry with them forever. Indeed, my past students often greet me by reciting their favorite poem by heart.

Some may wonder why I spend so much class time devoted to the seemingly old fashion practice of memorizing verse. Yet there is a method to my madness. Nine, to be precise:


1)Memorizing poems increases memory skills. Your brain is like any muscle in your body, the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. The more you practice remembering, the better you get at it. Memorizing poetry may at first seem daunting, but the rhyme and rhythm of most poems provides substantial mnemonic devices to make it easier than most students first imagine. By pointing these devices out with each new poem, students then begin to use them to remember more abstract pieces of information such as mathematic formulas and science equations.

2)Reciting poetry increases fluency and intonation. For second language learners, mastering the native flow and intonation of another language is a great challenge. When reciting poetry, its rhythm, meter and rhyme draw the speaker into the flow of the language, so if your not pronouncing the words or accents correctly, it's obvious. Students hear this and correct themselves finding the natural pace of the language and improving their own speech outside of the poem.

3)Provides a meaningful starting point for teaching the elements of poetry. With each new poem, students experience a new poetry form, a new rhyme scheme, new figurative language and build their poetic vocabulary. Rather than memorizing a list of poetic techniques, students have meaningful opportunities to talk of stanzas, couplets, end rhyme, alliteration, onomatopoeia, and metaphor. And their understanding of these terms is long-lasting.

4)Familiarizes students with prominent poets and famous poems. Rather than reading about an author's work and fame in an anthology, memorizing their poems internalizes not only the author, but also their style and experience into the students' minds. The difference between authors is no long confusing because students' now have a memorized reference point for each. Langston Hughes is hip and urban while Robert Frost talks about the calm of nature. Emily Dickinson speaks of longing and understanding while Dorothy Parker's sharp wit bites back. And more often than not, students find a poet that speaks directly to them, one whose work they will seek out to read more of their poetry.

5)Reciting poetry builds public speaking skills. Each week as students recite the poem in front of the class, they overcome their fears and develop the confidence we expect in public speakers. They learn poise, gesturing, moving for emphasis and the power of a pause. Having the poem memorized reduces their nervousness and by Christmas they are hamming it up for their classmates, crossing the bridge between reciting and presenting, which is where the real excitement in poetry lies.

6)Heightens awareness of the power of precise words. Inevitably, each new poem presents new vocabulary for students. Learned within the context of the poem, the words soon become part of the students' vocabulary and their writing as well. At first they lean towards these more precise words to sound more sophisticated, but eventually they choose them because they more accurately express their ideas. As Mark Twain said, 'The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter ' 'tis the difference between the lighting bug and the lightning.'�

7)Incites students to write their own poems. You might call this the Weird Al Yankovich effect. At some point, students will find a way to alter the poem to make it humorous for their peers. Change a word here, a phrase there, then say it in a funny voice and viola! They're writing their own poems! It might not be Pulitzer material, but they've started on their own to play with words and have experienced first-hand audience response to literature.

8)Creates a sense of empowerment with language. When students begin to recognize puns, metaphors and double entendres, their experience with language is greatly enhanced. They've now entered into that secret conversation with an author that previously was unknown to them. They can enjoy the subtle humor and cunning wit that only those with a strong command of the language picked up on before. They've moved beyond reading for comprehension to reading for the creative expression of ideas. They notice indirect inferences and the beauty language has to offer. In any language, the understanding of poetry is a hallmark of mastery of the language.

9)Poetry heightens empathy. Poetry provides a window into a world of experience and emotions that most school subjects don't have time to explore. It provides an outlet for the expression of joys and sorrows that all humans experience but most lack the words to convey. Students can more easily understand another's emotion before they can grasp the abstract idea of that emotion, and more often than not, the overwhelming mood of a poem is understood before the students can even express it themselves.

Poetry humanizes each and every one of us. There something special about the expression of emotion through verse. It comforts our defeats and celebrates our triumphs as nothing else can. It speaks to each of us, all at once, and yet to each of us individually as well. In the elegance of poetry, we find our place in humanity and we find each other there too.

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