Do you do it?
Do you believe it has merit?
What poems do you know?
Bonus points if you can write out the poem, from memory, in your post.
Pic related is the first poem I memorised (purely because I liked it and it's short - I was 6 years old). From "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland".
For a long time now I've planned to memorize one poem per day. Bought a bunch of books and am basically ready to start but I'm just too lazy. Would be good training though...
>from memory
I can recall almost all of Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade", but it has a few very similar stanzas and I think I'd mess it up. I can also do "I wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by Wordsworth and "If" by Kipling but I think everyone knows those.
So I'll do my favourite Auden poem.
>August 1968 by Auden.
The ogre does what ogres can
Things [far?] beyond the [reach?] of man
But one thing likes beyond his reach
The ogre cannot master speech
About a subjugated plain
Amongst its desperate and slain
The ogre struts with hands on hips
While drivel gushes from its lips
^ Pretty sure it's 95% correct.
Wirf dein Schweres in die Tiefe!
Mensch, vergiss! Mensch vergiss!
Göttlich ist des Vergessens Kunst!
Willst du fliegen,
willst du in höhen heimisch sein:
Wirf dein Schwerstes in das Meer!
Hier ist das Meer! Wirf dich ins Meer!
Göttlich ist des Vergessens Kunst!
I tend to repeat the shorter ones that I like in my head anyway, and eventually I learn them off by heart.
One little two little three little Indians.
Four little five little
I forgot the rest. Something about Indians.
People recall a poem or large swathes of text from a novel because they actually like it, thereby reading it again and again. Normal people don't purposely memorize poetry, unless you're nine years old and it's an assignment.
Nietzsche or Hölderlin?
Nietzsche. In general I think his poetry is pretty underrated, he has some really good stuff imo. Maybe it's just because his philosophical work overshadows it.
Never full poems, because I can't be assed. Head is full of lines and sections.
I know maybe twenty by heart, all of them are short and were written in my native language though.
One of them is a beautiful patriotic poem which honestly helps with homesickness.
Most of the others I know because they were covered by bands.