Poem Memorization Tip Number Nine

I’m working on the poem, To A Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing by William Butler Yeats.  Here’s what I’ve memorized so far:

Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honor bred, with one
Who were it proved he lies…

Look at the line that starts with “being honor bred.”  The first letters of the words in that line and into the next make a pattern: B,H,B,W,O,W.  Bhb? Wow!  It’s so useful for me to find an anchor, like alliteration or patterns, to moor me to a particular passage.  At first I just memorize the pattern.  Then, when I’m working on the actual words, repeating them again and again, I’ll invariably forget one or two.  That’s when I give the anchor rope a tug.  It pulls me back to the text.  The memorable pattern gives me a clue about what I’m missing.

This is me memorizing: being honor something, being honor something, being honor….(oh brother, thought I had it)…um…bhb, bhb, ahh, right, bred!  Being honor bred, being honor bred.   Whew!  O.K.  For how can you compete, being honor BRED!  Yes!

Here’s another treasure you get from finding memorable patterns.  Looking at a line like this helps me appreciate the actual genius of the poet, the structure of the line, especially in the latter half.  The W,O,W part of the sentence are the words “with one who,” but the actual W sounds are with the first two words, one of which starts with W but the other with O.  The word Who is breathy, not a plainly W-esque sound.  And humorously, the word after the breathy Who is Were, another W word but that does start with the W sound.

Call me weird and wacky (or wheird and whacky) but I love noticing these things, and I’ve gotta say, they help me memorize poems.  They also help me appreciate the poem’s structure and the poet’s craft in writing it.