The NYTimes started a week-long series of posts on poetry today, The Poetry Challenge. In their first post they walk through a 16-line poem by W.H. Auden (British poet, d. 1973) using the voices of Matthew McConaughey, Tracy K. Smith, Alison Bechdel and Yiyun Li to present it. It’s a lovely and thought-provoking poem and the format for encountering it is engaging.
Let’s memorize a poem! Not because it’s good for us or because we think we should, but because it’s fun, a mental challenge with a solid aesthetic reward. You can amuse yourself, impress your friends and maybe discover that your way of thinking about the world — or even, as you’ll see, the universe — has shifted a bit.
Over the next five days, we’ll look closely at a great poem by one of our favorite poets, and we’ll have games, readings and lots of encouragement to help you learn it by heart.