Why Do We Memorize Poetry?

There are few things more puzzling to a modern child than being told to memorize a poem.

“Why?”

It is a fair question. After all, the poem is right there in the book. And if the book disappears, Google has almost certainly preserved it somewhere. Why spend an afternoon learning words that have already been conveniently written down?

The old answer is surprisingly simple: Because some things are worth knowing by heart.

For centuries, children memorized poetry as a normal part of their education. They learned Homer and Virgil. They recited Shakespeare. They carried Longfellow, Dickinson, and countless nursery rhymes around in their heads.

At Heritage Classical Academy, we continue this old practice. Below are three reasons why.

1. Poetry trains the memory.

Memory grows by being used. A child who memorizes four lines discovers that he can memorize eight. Then twelve. Then an entire poem.

This takes attention. It takes repetition. It occasionally takes pacing around the kitchen muttering the same stanza until everyone else in the family has accidentally memorized it too.

But something important is happening. The child is learning that his mind can hold more than he thought it could. That lesson reaches far beyond poetry.

2. Poetry teaches children to love language.

Children should encounter words that are beautiful. Poetry gives them language with rhythm and music. It introduces wonderful words they might not encounter in ordinary conversation. It teaches them that the difference between the right word and an almost-right word matters.

Long before a child can explain meter, metaphor, or alliteration, he can hear them. The Greeks understood this. So did Shakespeare. Children understand it too—which is probably why they can remember a ridiculous rhyme after hearing it twice but somehow forget that you asked them to put on their shoes thirty seconds ago.

Good language sticks. And the more beautiful language a child hears, speaks, and remembers, the more natural good language becomes.

3. Poetry gives children something beautiful to carry with them.

This is perhaps the best reason of all. When a child memorizes a poem, the poem changes addresses. It moves from the page into the child.

A book can be placed back on the shelf. A website can disappear. A phone can run out of batteries at precisely the moment you need it. But what has been learned by heart belongs to you.

That was once considered one of the great purposes of education. The Greeks filled the imagination with Homer. Medieval schoolchildren learned the Psalms. Generations of English-speaking children carried Shakespeare and great poetry in their memories.

They were building an interior treasury. We want our students to have one too. Someday, our children will be grown. They may forget the worksheet they completed on a Tuesday morning in second grade. They may even forget the name of the textbook.

But perhaps, while walking beneath a night sky or watching leaves fall on an October afternoon, an old line will suddenly return to them. And they will discover that something beautiful they learned as a child has been quietly traveling with them all along.

That is why we memorize poetry. Some things are simply too good to leave in the book.

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Something Worth Keeping

This month, read a poem aloud together. Poem: “The Eagle” — Alfred, Lord Tennyson