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.