"St Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it.11 Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.12 When the age for reflective thought comes, the pupil who has been thus trained in 'ordinate affections' or 'just sentiments' will easily find the first principles in Ethics; but to the corrupt man they will never be visible at all and he can make no progress in that science.13 Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful."

CS Lewis The Abolition of Man

Friday, February 08, 2013

How to Choose a Poem to Memorize

On my Morning Time for Beginners page I linked to my poetry list.
I was a little embarrassed to link to these old lists because they reflect the changing nature of our home and school. One girl wrote that she couldn't imagine memorizing that many poems.

Truthfully, not all of my children have memorized all of the poems. Some were not even born when we began and some grew up before we got around to the poem.

You can clearly see from the list that I went through a moralistic poetry phase which I do not recommend even though it is fun now to have a family culture of laughing at some of  those poems. Every once in a while moralizing works in poetry: "Did you tackle the trouble that came your way with a resolute heart and cheerful..."  That works. "How doth the little busy bee...." That works too for parody. "When I go to church I'm as quiet as a mouse...."  Yes, that is bad! It ends up with a rhyme involving 'God's house' and it does not work except for perhaps one Sunday with a 6 yo who is still trying to be a really 'good' boy.  Hardly worth the time. So in so many ways I find my own poetry list inferior.

Thankfully we began by using 101 Famous Poems almost exclusively.  This saved the boys from another few years of  "Birds in their little nests agree..." a poem no self-respecting boy can ever love.

After my moralizing phase I went back to Frost and R.L. Stevenson: can't fail poets.

Then I moved into my let's try something really, really long phase. This worked well with Paul Revere's Ride but not so well with Horatius at The Bridge and The Modern Major General unless you count cultural reference as important as word-for-word accuracy. 

Finally, I landed safely back on the British Isles where Shakespeare and Yeats are all you ever need unless you want to read, not memorize, Gray. Yes, let's read Gray today and tomorrow.

How do I choose a poem? I pick one I like. I pick one that may be a part of our broader reading as with Shakespeare. It is always nice to memorize something from a play you are reading.

I pick one to make a point. This is an absolutely worthless way to pick a poem but I mention it because you will do it anyway.

If your children are very young go with Mother Goose. Then move on to Christina Rossetti and Robert Louis Stevenson. Do not be afraid to skip Blake. I hate eye-rhyme.
 
In the Ambleside recommendations they have you studying one poet per term like they do in the artist and composer sections. I do not recommend this. It is often too boring and it will make everyone hate the poet. Who can bear De La Mare?

You can have your older students study one longer poem per term such as The Idylls of the King (Year or more) or The Vision of Sir Launfal  but don't feel guilty if you do not enjoy all the poems by one poet in the younger and middle years.

Here is a list of 15 Great Poems excluding Shakespeare ( We don't want him hogging up the list like he does everything else.)

1. Crossing the Bar by Tennyson

2. Sonnet on His Blindness by Milton

3. The Road Not Taken by Frostt

4. Opportunity by Edward Sill

5. Casey at the Bat By Ernest Thayer

6. Sail On by Miller

7. If by Rudyard Kipling (If you must moralize Kipling is the  go-to Man.)

8. In Flander's Field by Johh Mcrae

9.The Destruction of Sennacharib by Byron

10.  Breathes by Sir Walter Scott

11. Recessional by Kipling

12 Requiem by RLS

13. Sea Fever by Masefield

14. To a Mouse by Burns

15. Weathers by Thomas Hardy


Other Resources:

Marguerite De Angeli's Book of Nursery & Mother Goose Rhymes
 
Mother Goose by Tasha Tudor

The Harp and Laurel Wreath: Poetry and Dictation for the Classical Curriculum
Posted by Cindy Rollins at 2/08/2013 08:30:00 AM
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11 comments:

  1. Ah, my kids love Blake. And de la Mare. De gustibus non disputandum.

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    1. I used to think I liked Blake and then one day I realized I didn't. I do like Little Lamb, Who Made Thee still but I that is about it.

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    2. When my boy twin was two he was obsessed with "The Tyger." He made me read it over and over. And then he tried to understand the symbolism. Literary symbolism and two year olds do not mix very well. Tigers don't burn.

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  2. I always love your poetry posts, Cindy! Thank you for the list of fifteen great poems.

    We started with Mother Goose--one of our favorite editions was illustrated by Rosemary Wells. We moved on to A Child's Garden of Verses, followed by The Harp and Laurel Wreath. Then we read 101 Famous Poems. This year we've been using The Boy's Book of Verse. It is OK. Some of the poems were good, some we couldn't make heads or tails of, and some were pretty poor examples of poetry. We just read straight through the books. Not very original, but it works well for us.

    Susan

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    1. I just realized my comment had nothing to do with memorizing poetry. We read a poem a day from the sources I mentioned. Thank you for the list of poems to memorize. I'm often at a loss for what to choose next.

      Susan

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  3. Cindy, I appreciated your comment about why you don't follow the AO recommendations for a-poet-a-term. I am often curious about the thinking behind your choices, so it is always interesting to hear the explanations!
    And as a fellow runner, I am praying for you and your training. I will be doing my first half-marathon in May. (Perhaps my last, also, depending on how awful it is to be in a crowd of 16,000 people!)
    Sally in OH

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    1. Sally, I also have anxiety about running with a bunch of people. That situation is not an introvert's dream. I am not sure I will ever run more than a 5k although if I ever get faster I might because I can now run for 50-60 minutes slowly. But I want to keep my goals realistic so that I continue to enjoy running and I avoid injury to my old joints.

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  4. I like to switch up the poets in the younger Ambleside years for much the same reason as yours. I use Favorite poems Old and New. However my two in year 4 and 6 enjoy sticking with their poet a term. I think it really helps them get become familiar the style of that poet when they are completely immersed in that poet for 12 weeks. It makes my heart swell when I hear one of them say of a poem they hear, "that sounds like Robert Frost!"

    As for memorization, I was having them memorize a poem from that term's poet, but felt like it wasn't quite enough. This year we are using IEWs "Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization" and are progressing quite nicely. It's nice to have some direction and focus and they are greatly enjoying it. Some of the poems are a bit on the silly side in level 1, but it keeps the children's interest level up and makes it more fun.

    Great point about being careful not to choose moralizing poems. It is tempting. We were just reading "Birds in their little nests agree..." yesterday in "Laddie". Apparently the author was not fond of the poem either. :)

    Thanks again for your thoughts. I find your blog immensely helpful.

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  5. I love "Sea Fever" even though I have never been to sea. We have all enjoyed "The Glove and the Lions" by Leigh Hunt.

    I tried to read through the recommended poems from the Oxford book of poems from the Ambleside 7 list, but I couldn't understand much of the language in the first few centuries of the book, and had no clue how to read it.

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  6. I like your list of poems. We do read the poet selections from Ambleside Online. The thing I have most liked about it is that all three boys hear their poems and their brothers' poems, too. Sometimes I chose the poem to memorize and sometimes they did although some poems I required all of them to learn: selected poems from RLS, Rossetti, Blake's Lamb and Tyger set, Village Blacksmith and Paul Revere's Ride by Longfellow, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Death Be Not Proud and Batter My Heart are ones that come immediately to mind as well as Shakespeare and Tennyson. They also chose ones they especially liked--ds #2 adored Eliot's cat poems and insisted on learning The Rum Tum Tugger.

    I fell prey to moralizing, too, and they all learned Mr. Nobody as a result and other old moralizing poems from "Oxford Book of Poems".

    We read the poem they are memorizing every day and they use it for copywork. We start by reading, then they join in with me while I read, stanza by stanza, then they supply end words and repeat after me, then they recite as much as the stanza with prompting. At the end, they were required to stand up properly in front of the rest of us and recite with correct pronunciation and posture.

    I have no idea how much of it they will retain, but my hope is that it will stand them in good stead when they are old and/or are bored with nothing to do but think their own thoughts. :)

    Joy

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  7. Oh, I forgot to say that the great thing about them all hearing each others' poets is that by ds #3 got to that poet, it was already familiar and memorizing was much easier for him. Of course, I only have three children. I can imagine it would be much harder with large families.

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