Tips for memorizing your poem
- Be strategic. Pick a poem with a pattern — metre and rhyme are much easier to learn by heart than free verse.
- Be old school. Copy the poem out a couple of times — on actual paper.
- Be hermetic. Turn off your cell phone and close your laptop screen — you need quiet.
- Be relentless. Say the poem over and over — and over and over.
- Be patient. Take it one line at a time, and don’t get frustrated if you forget lines.
- Be weird. Don’t be afraid to practice on family, friends, mirrors, and walls.
- Beware! Memorizing poems is habit-forming — you’ll want to learn more.
—Jason Guriel, Reader’s Digest