Poetry in Motion

[crazydiamondsue]

That last meme made me think (applauses, applause.) I bolded memorized a poem as "done" and wondered what poems my literary friends had committed to memory because they A) Had to; B) Seemed boho; or C) just loved it too freaking much to get it out of their head.

The one I can quote was actually used as a pick-up line on me when I was 19 or so. (They guy in question was beyond description, he used to pass out business cards that read "professional adventurer") but I loved the poem so much he got a kiss:

 somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond - ee cummings
   
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
 

Comments

good question -- (ATS finale spoilers)

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

I'm a memorizing fool, to the point that I refer to certain levels of drunkenness as "poetry reciting drunk." I'm kinda surprised I've never done it for you, esp. not after the Angel party. (I was probably too busy saying "Was Spike's poem actually GOOD?" and "Do you think they're OK? the world hasnt' ended, right, so they must be OK. Spike and Angel have the Shanshu thing, Illyria's a goddess, and Gunn is wily.")

Anyway, things I can recite with fair confidence are "Terence, this is stupid stuff" by AE Housman (perfect drunken poem, with the line "many a peer of England brews livelier liquor than the muse, and malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man); other miscellaneous Housman (when I was one and twenty, 1887, to an Athlete dying young, maybe some others I can't think of right now); Jabberwocky; "Ulysses" by Tennyson; various and sundry Yeats ("When you are old," "Song of Wandering Aengus," and that one with the title as a date that I can never remember -- but it's the "With O'Leary in the Grave" one). Also several monologues from Shakespeare: "Lovers and Madmen" and "If we shadows..." etc in MSND; "Tomorrow" etc from Macbeth; "Be cheerful sir. . ." etc from "the Tempest". And lots of other snatches of things -- the last half of "Dover Beach," most of "Friends Roman's countrymen," and "To be or not to be" (I always get hung up after "the pangs of disprized love, the law's delay), and Edmund's "excellent foppery of the world from "Lear." Hrrm, that's all I can think of but there are probably more that I could produce with some prodding. All's I can say is that I was way bored in my high school English classes.