I was poking around poets.org (thanks for the link) and came across the poem that is for me like The River Merchants Wife is for you (beautiful and bubbling up from time to time)
http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?45442B7C000C04000172

Poetry can be so powerful--especially when some stranger's words articulate your feelings with such precision--I suppose the advent of the romantic mix tape reduced poetry book sales considerably. . . .

A friend once memorized Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" and I begged her to recite it to me almost daily for a month. It's a beautiful poem, as are many of Oliver's.

I didn't actually DO any work, but I reaped the sweet reward anyway! Good luck!

I had to memorize a poem in 12th grade, and I still remember some of it. I also remember how frightened I waas to recite in front of the class.
I see the value of memorizing poetry, but I have not used this in my classes - now I will consider doing this. Thanks for the nudge, Robin.

I don't think people should go overboard on memorization -- we see the downside of that here in Mali, which uses the French system of education, which is based on a lot of memorization and not much critical thinking.

That said, here's another great thing I did in school: Mr. Fichter had a bunch of laminated prints of famous paintings. Each day he would bring out a new one and we would talk about it. Then he would pick someone to go around the room and name the title and artist of each painting we'd learned so far that year. By the holiday break, we fourth-graders knew a lot of paintings! And to this day, when I see one in a museum I can tell you I know it from Mr. Fichter's class.

the first line of sylvia plath's "morning song"--love set you going like a fat gold watch--always plays in my mind like a lyric. (then again, i also remember the first lines of her poem, "daddy". imagine reciting that one at parties...)