Memorization and Control

You know how, when you've bought a new car, suddenly you see cars of the same make, model, and color as yours everywhere? Well, that's how I feel about memorizing poetry. I started just last month on a memorization project, and since then I just keep seeing and hearing about poets who memorize poems everywhere.

The lastest is a 12-minute interview by Christian Wiman with poet Dan Beachy-Quick, at the podcast Poetry Off the Shelf. Beachy-Quick (wow, that's a pain to type, let's call him DB-Q for the duration of this post) has been memorizing poetry for years, and when asked what it affords him, he answered that "putting the poem in one's self...creates a new channel of intelligence in me that isn't mine at all...you memorize a poem that is its own form of recognition, and let it have control of you, so to speak, rather than memorizing to have a kind of control of it."

Later he says, "I began to think of memorization in a way as a kind of an inscription of words onto the self..."

To learn why DB-Q advises people who don't write poetry to memorize poems, and to hear him recite some poems important to him, click on the link above. For some reason, the podcast is not yet available on this screen, so click on the "Subscribe" button to the left, but don't panic, you don't have to actually subscribe (unless you want to). When the new screen comes up, simply click on "Inscribe the poem on yourself" and you'll get to hear this interview on your audio player. Also available in iTunes.