Memory Recitation - Melissa Mendoza

Having to really memorize Thoughts of a Young Girl by John Ashbery presented itself as a challenge because there was not a lot of connections I could make from one line to another. I found myself repeating the first line over and over, until I felt comfortable with it and then moved on to the next. I continued to add line by line but as I grew closer to the end I just focused on the last half of the poem and would forget the beginning. This process occurred a lot, but it was not until later that I practiced it in fourths or thirds. I tried to remember the first words of each line as well to try to remember the order of the lines. Eventually, I was able to memorize the entire poem, but it took me looking at a particular spot and trying to picture the words in front of me. I felt that this method helped most, especially when I was really reciting the poem, as opposed to just reading it in my head. Once I practiced this for about 15 minutes, I was able to correctly recite the poem without messing up. I did all of this the night before and the next day in the morning I looked over the poem a couple of times before reciting it.

This exercise helped me understand better the emotion behind the thoughts of a young girl. I felt that once I began to read it and say it aloud, I definitely shifted my opinion of the poem. Before I just thought it was a random compilation of lines which made some sense when read together. But as I recited each line on its own, I saw how some lines carried a certain confidence or grace; and other lines carried a more insecure or nostalgic undertone. I thought it was very interesting to be able to feel this when read aloud, especially in singular repetitions. I did play some with my tone of voice for each line, but in the end I focused more on remembering the lines, and the tone seemed to fall into place as I began to recite the poem in class.

Poem Memorization-- Belles

I signed up to recite a poem from Michael McClure's Ghost Tantras, before even having read one, simply because McClure's work was next to be read for class, and I thought it would be easiest to memorize a poem from a work that I was already reading at the time.  I had peeked inside of the book upon renting it from the bookstore, but had no real idea of the work's content or its context when deciding whose poem I would memorize.  When we began to read McClure's poetry in class, I was attracted to Tantra #49, as I realized that it held a certain significance.
After a rude awakening when I found myself in class on Tuesday unprepared for my poem recitation, I set out to redeem myself from my embarrassment. I began reading, reading, and re-reading the 49th tantra to pound it into my head.  As I read the poem and set out to memorize each line, I remembered that Michael mentioned a video of McClure in class.  A quick youtube search turned up several archived videos with the poet, and I began watching.  As I watched these interviews, I began to understand the character of the artist who created the poem I sought to learn.  McClure's incredibly strange and unique demeanor was no surprise to see, especially after studying the tantras in his book.  I listened to McClure describe his experience with hallucinogenic drugs, music of the 60's and his writing process.  In each video McClure displayed an airy, almost semi-present quality, often finishing cohesive sentences with strands of nonsense words and phrases.  In one video in particular, McClure is seen reading the 49th tantra to several lions in a zoo.  As the beasts roar, the poet recites his work calmly and with a certain serenity at first.  His pronunciation of "drooor" is nearly sung, and the ends of his sentences often end in little more than a whisper.  When he arrives at the second half of the poem, however, he begins to roar with a newfound vigor and volume.  The roars of lions are coupled with the Graahhhrrrs of the poet, and each seem to encourage or at least excite one another.  It is this rendition of the 49th poem that I studied, to do my best at emulating the energy and character of McClure's reading of his own work.
I found the english poetry quite pleasant to memorize, and in fact, began to draw new meanings from the work as I read it again and again.  What once seemed to me like an unintelligible strand of words and phrases actually began to hold meaning and significance.  The self-assuring and almost encouraging tone of the poem began to ring in my ears, and I understood it to mean much more than I originally thought. The challenging bit of the poem was, for me, the second half.  To recite this poem like McClure did in his reading to lions, I needed to memorize each individual Graahhrr sound in its uniqueness-- all 40 of them.  Slowly but surely, I developed a code, and assigned each beast sound a number, by which I memorized the list.  In doing this, I felt a certain victory, by --if only partially--creating some sense of order and organization where there otherwise appeared to be none.  All in all, I found the experience extremely entertaining, and hope to remember the Grahhrs that I memorized for a long time.

recitation - connor chapman

First of all, I love Sharon Mesmer. She's funny. Annoying Diabetic Bitch is funny.

Long ago, I had a discussion with my friend about the effect of poetry versus music with lyrics. I argued that poetry was a wasted art form (mind you, this was long before I set foot on any college campus—I have since learned from my mistake), and that songs with lyrics were the ultimate deluxe form of poetry. He argued that poetry without a melody could be interpreted more ways, and was therefore not a wasted art form. I had to admit, he got me there, and I promise there is a point to this anecdote. When this was assigned, I thought immediately back to this conversation, and then again to the two poems I had to memorize in second grade: a poetry is merely music without melody, song without tunes that don't come directly from the cadence of the words, and that's how I chose to memorize it. There are few songs on my Recently Played playlist in my iTunes library that I don't know the words to, and I decided that I would do the exact same thing with Annoying Diabetic Bitch: repeat, repeat, and repeat again. What words repeat, what phrases? Recite the poem over and over, over and over, over and over, especially the parts I had a habit of screwing up. How did the lines fit together, how did the words create the sentence flow so that I could express it properly I looked up the poem, and found a video of Sharon Mesmer reading the poem at a flarf festival, but she omitted some lines and switched some wordings around, so I tried not to listen to her read it too much, but I did often on my way to and from class, the frat house, my dorm, Starbucks, whatever. I'm also the kind of guy who sings aloud whenever he so desires, so I did the same thing with this: I quietly recited the poem over and over under my breath in class and to and from the same places. It was more difficult than memorizing a song, but it required more specific attention. You can just glisten by with a melody, but I had to pay attention to where Mesmer fit in phrases like "diabetic," "diabetes," "bitch," who she was describing, how often those things were repeated, what have you. Also, I had to think about which arts of the sentences to properly stress, and maybe put my own twist on it compared to Mesmer's reading.

But like I said: it's just like remembering the words to a song, just with no melody. And now, just like my other favorite songs, it's in my repertoire, ready to spout about.

Recitation - Minji Kim

     For my recitation, I memorized “Calico Pie” from Edward Lear’s The Complete Nonsense, which is a collection of limericks. I chose this piece because I was attracted to Lear’s illustrations that describe each stanza of the poem. I am an auditory learner so whenever I memorize something I re-listen materials over and over again. However, this time it was little bit hard to memorize through hearing due to the subtle changes in repeating part of the poem. For example, the repeating part of the first stanza starts wit, “And they never came back to me” and the repeating part of the rest of the stanza uses “But” not “And”. Another example of the subtle change that is hard to recognize in the poem is the description of the main figure (or subject) of the each stanza. First three stanzas describe the main figure in each stanza as “little”: “The little Birds” in the first stanza, “The little Fish” in the second stanza, and “The little mice” for the third stanza. However, the last stanza does not any adjective to describe the “Grasshoppers” which is the major character of the last stanza of the poem. I, first time, tried to memorize the poem by repeating and listening the poem but I found myself having hard to memorizing due to the small changes from stanza to stanza. However, I figured out that drawing the images of the illustrations by Lear in my head helped me a lot memorizing the poem. One of the important things I have learned from memorizing poem is that poem is not just reciting the words but it is rather more like drawing pictures of the poem. Before I memorize Lear’s limericks I could not understand why Lear put so many illustrations and drawing in his poem. But now I understand the purpose of the poem. Lear wants readers to compare what they have drawn and imagined when they read his poem and his illustration, and his illustrations help me to draw my own drawing coming out of the recitation of the poem. Another interesting point I figured out by memorizing the poem is the importance of reading poem out loud. Whenever I was assigned to read poem in this class, I barely read assignments out loud. However, as I read poem out lout, I recognize that reading poem out loud helps me to understand the mood and atmosphere of the poem. For instance, “Calico Pie” looks like a funny limerick that contains many repeating parts; however, as I read the repeating phrases such as “never came back (to me)” I get a feeling of isolation that is a contrast to the first part of the poem which describes what the major figure is doing and playing. Reading out loud the phrase of “never came back” encourages me to imagine a child who is looking forward meeting little birds, mice, fish, and grasshoppers but soon he or she is disappointed by them not coming back. Those lessons I could only learn from memorizing and reading the poem out loud, and I would like to suggest other people to do same thing when they read certain poem.

Memorization - Matt

At first I wasn't too sure about memorizing any one of Gertrude Stein's poems in Tender Buttons. I wasn't sure what my approach would be, so I decided whichever poem I pick, I would just recite it over and over again, until it became muscle memory for my mouth. I flipped through the book and pick two and asked my friend to pick a number, 1 or 2, and that's how I picked "A Little Called Pauline."

It was abut hard at first. The first few lines were haphazard; there was no obvious connection among the short sentences. As I kept going through the poem, memorizing little by little, I began to have the feeling that the poem is a snippet of a one sided conversation, or someone talking to him/herself. I thought maybe the object being addressed in the poem was a little girl or a little piece of ribbon that was affectionately given a name.

The first third of the poem had little connection to anything, but once I got to the part with "Gracious of gracious and a stamp a blue green white bow a blue green lean, lean on the top..." the nonsensical formation of the words sort of made sense. When I say makes sense, I mean the sound of the words made it feel like what was being said had significant meaning, but it didn't.

"...show white has lime in sight. Show a stitch of ten. Count, count so that thicker and thicker is leaning" had a rhythm to it that made it feel like it was a real sentence. Of course it was a bit of a tongue twister saying show white when I was tempted to say snow white.

By the end of memorizing the poem in its entirety and after many recitations to myself, the poem felt more organic. It didn't have to make logical sense. I imagined it like a conversation, so I spoke as if I was in a conversation and I guess that's where the poem came alive for me. It felt weird like it was just existing based on a mismatching of words and syntax. In the end, it was a rewarding experience I think and I have a better appreciation for Stein.

Recitation

Memorizing that piece in Cage really changed my perspective of his work. Before, I thought he wanted to be sensible, but bland. Only thing, is that where he placed his pauses, were very insensible. It was shocking to me because I had previously felt, when I was reading, a sense of meaning in the silences. Instead, when memorizing, I felt no meaning. Actually, it felt as though the silences were there with the intention of destroying any possible meaning. Although, I got nervous and did not do the performance rehearsed, my intention was to be monotone. I wanted to make my voice seem uninteresting and my demeanor uninteresting as well. When performing it, it felt as though the underlying theme of nothingness should have been highlighted. By saying anything with too much enthusiasm, I would have been risking the bottom line: nothing. Those that hear this lecture are not supposed to be captivated, but rather should be anxious. We have this tendency to look for meaning in everything. We don't let things just be as they are said or written. . Cage just was wanted us to get nothing. He didn't want meaning to be extracted from his words.
Communication is a multifaceted action. It requires words, intonations, nonverbal cues, sometimes gestures and so forth in order for the meaning to be conveyed. Cage gives us words. Even when he is speaking on ideas with deeper meaning, or explaining a concept, it is not probable that the meaning was transferred. You can see this in the part where he was talking about life and structure. They work hand in hand to deliver meaning. One without the other is nothing. It's ironic, because his lecture is exactly that. Structure, without life. As an audience to a performance such as this one, nothing could be understood until reading it and realizing the true impact and genius of his work. In reading it, I didn't not fully grasp what Cage was trying to do. I feel that having to recite it put me in a place where I had to try to understand the author's state of mind even more so that reading and analyzing a passage did. In trying to connect the ideas with the silences, I was able to see the lack of connection.
The experience of reciting was very rewarding for me. I spent lots of time repeating and rewriting my excerpt. I spent time visualizing everything so that I could hopefully connect it to the words and to the silences. There came a point where memorizing exactly were the silences were no longer mattered to me, so long as they were incorporated. Cage’s application of structure from music composition juxtaposes the stream of conscience he seems to utilize in his work. This juxtaposition was made most known to me when approaching the work from another angle.
In the beginning of the semester, I remember the point was made that reading was not just about the words on the page. We were advised to read out loud, embrace confusion, analyze the way we felt confused, and not to be one-sided in our thinking and analyzing. I’m sure that many would agree that this assignment was the perfect way of showing that.

Memorization-Joan Shang

For my recitation, I memorized a piece from Gertrude Stein’s “Tender Buttons” from the section, “Rooms.” Throughout this experiment and now reflecting on it, I've realized that I have learned more things about the poem than when I would've if I simply read the text. That is, the oral and auditory experience contributed to a deeper engagement to the piece. Furthermore, the process of memorizing  required methods such as recreating free-association to help me remember the sequence of seemingly haphazard phrases.

For example, Stein’s approach to poetry appears to be a random list of things that seem to have no connection to each other. For example, the following part of what I memorized illustrates this: “a single set of sisters, and outlines, and no blisters” (59). There is no explicit connection or transition between ‘a single set of sister,’ ‘outlines,’ and ‘blisters.’ The lack of thematic continuity and logical flow made it especially difficult to memorize this piece. Therefore I had to create my own associations to connect the words. In doing so, it not only helped me memorize the poem but also engage the piece in an entirely different level. That is, I recreated the free association process that Stein underwent in constructing the piece. For example, I connected “a creature,” “a question,” and “a syllable in answer” by thinking of the sphinx as the ‘creature,’ which is a mythical creature from Greek tradition that asks questions to travelers. I connected “a syllable in answer” by thinking the manner in which the travelers responded to the sphinx.

Similarly, I approached the memorization process through the reaction of free-association for the following phrase: “a single scientific statement,” “no darkness,” and “no question” (49). For these particular phrases, I connected the first and second parts with the idea of scientific knowledge lending insight, filling the ‘darkness’ or gap in the unknown truths. Furthermore, that the knowledge found is absolute therefore it would elicit “no questions” (49).  Although the leaps between phrases during the free-association are large, it also made me reflect on how Stein used free association to construct her poem. There is a certain spontaneity and chance element that serve as vehicles in driving the free-association that I didn’t realize until I participates in it myself.

Furthermore, the entire section that I memorized was one paragraph but one long sentence. This made it particularly different to find a pace. Often, I established a rhythm, memorizing became must easier. I did this by splicing up the paragraph in various places that seemed to have natural pauses. For example, I divided “A religion, almost a religion, any religion, a quintal in religion” in one part and then “A relying and a surface and a service in indecision” in another part.  Although there is no punctuation such as comma or period that indicates a pause, I felt that there was a natural tendency to take a breath here. Likewise, I partitioned “why is the surface outrageous, why is it beautiful” and “why is it not when there is no doubt” as separate lines.

In reflecting the process of my recitation, both the engagement in free-association and finding rhythm opened up a new realm of understanding in terms of this poem. I felt like I was able to scratch the service and gain a firmer grasp on the poem by giving it my own interpretation.