April is National Poetry Month. Follow the link to read more.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, poetry memorization is a lost discipline we should bring back into the classroom and home school. Plus, it makes a great party trick. Anyone remember how a Jabberwocky helped me out?
I call my Susan, 9, the human sponge. She memorizes easily. A Slash of Blue by Emily Dickinson is her current poem for memorization. She already knows:
- The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe
- A Time to Talk by Robert Frost
- I Wondered Lonely As a Cloud by William Wordsworth
- The Land of Nod by Robert Louis Stevenson
- A Tragic Story by William Makepeace Thackeray
- plus a handful of poems about childhood
Do you have a favorite poem? If you do, then try memorizing it.
Very cool, very true. I still remember and love some of the poems I memorized as a kid in school…
Catherine’s last blog post..Strange Sacred Day
9-11 All Over Again
(*9/11 A. O. A. is a poem I wrote in response to something Wess Stafford wrote in his book, “To Small To Ignore.” It’s a said poem and I apologize in advance for bringing everyone down)
Do you remember that fateful day
When about three thousand passed away?
Passed away? Sorry, I am mistaken,
They did not pass, they were taken.
Agonizing as this might be,
Envision this scenario with me.
Assaulted and collapsing towers
Three thousand dead every-three-hours.
Over and over the casualties mount
At days end, thirty thousand is the count.
Praying, wailing, a shocked world frozen,
Were we so providentially chosen?
Wondering why I would propose
Revisiting horrors such as those?
Because that many die each day,
Just not in that appalling way.
Thirty thousand kids under age five
This time tomorrow will not be alive.
A child’s death: Is it as profound
As when the towers came tumbling down?
Critics may shout, Its not the same!
The fittest survive, were not to blame.
The words of Jesus would not agree,
What you do for them, you do for Me.
What can be done in this our nation
To surmount this desperate situation?
In Jesus name, reject this crime
By helping one child at a time.
Compassion daves last blog post..Ugandan Rain and Bangladesh Economic Crisis