Songs, Poems, and Memorization

 

Words have always enthralled me. My real appreciation for their power, beauty, and background came in the fifth grade at St. Mary’s Grade School on Liberty Street in Independence, Missouri. That year—1945-46—Sister Mary Lee, a short, enthusiastic educator—came to our classroom each Wednesday to introduce us to the realm of poetry.  

 

She started with lyrics to popular songs. Most of my classmates listened to the radio and knew the songs of the earlier decades as well as the patriotic songs of World War I and II and the songs from Hollywood musicals. 

 

Just the year before, Bing Crosby had sung “Swinging on a Star” in the musical “Going My Way.” All of us—some twenty-one students—knew that song: it’s lyrics; its beat; its cadence. The melody coursed through our bodies so that our feet got the beat, our hands clapped the cadence.

 

In our first poetry session in September 1945, Sister Mary Lee invited us to sing the Academy Award song. Then she invited us to recite the words and let our bodies feel them. 

 

For each stanza as well as the refrain, she asked one of us to act out the words with our bodies—face, hands, feet. She had us laughing with one another as individual students pantomimed the four animals—mule, pig, fish, and monkey—of the song.

 

The following week, she directed our attention to the words the song writer had chosen. She suggested other words, and we discussed why the lyricist perhaps hadn’t used them. 

 

She’d ask, “What picture comes to your mind with this word . . . that word?” “How does that word make you feel?” “What memories come to mind?”

 

In the following weeks, we studied two or three other songs. Then Sister Mary Lee introduced us to “poems” without melodies. Depending on their length, we learned one poem a week for the remainder of the school year. In the beginning, these poems were stories in verse. For instance: 

·       “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” by Edward Lear

·      “The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat” by Eugene Field 

·      “The Ride of Paul Revere” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

·      “Casey at the Bat” by Ernest Thayer 

 

Each week, after Sister Mary Lee read aloud the new poem, we discussed its story, savoring its words, pictures, and rhyme. As the weeks of that school year progressed, we learned alliteration, rhyme scheme, cadence, stressed and unstressed syllables. That is, we began to study some of the tools a poet uses.

 

At the end of each Wednesday class, Sister Mary Lee gave us our weekly assignment: Memorize the complete poem or, for longer verse stories, memorize a certain number of lines. 

 

“Be ready,” she’d always say, “to recite for me and your classmates next week! Practice in front of a mirror! Listen to yourself! Feel the words in your mouth. On your tongue. Whisper some. Shout others. Give this all you’ve got!”

 

That was the beginning of my memorizing each poem I met and liked in the years ahead. 

 

Next week I hope to introduce you to some other poems introduced to our class by Sister Mary Lee—poems that led to my burgeoning desire to write. 

 

I’m wondering what poems you remember learning in grade school. Did you memorize some of them?

 

Peace. 

 

PS: I finally responded to your welcomed comments on the three postings I did right before Christmas. If you have the time, energy, and inclination, you may want to scroll down and read my responses.