# Do or did pupils have to memorize poems?



## Encolpius

Hello, when I went to primary and secondary school (1980-1992) we had to memorize verses from poems and I still remember a couple of poems by heart even though I am not working in that field. A younger friend of mine from abroad claimed they did not have to. Is that or modern or regional habit? *Did or do school children have to memorize poems, verses in your country? *In the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary children have to memorize poems. I can't imagine someone can't quote Hamlet or lines like that. Thanks.


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## ewie

Hello Encolpius.  Short useless answer to a question about memorizing things: _I can't remember ~ school was *so* long ago_

I know that when I was at primary school (1969-75) we were given short poems to *copy* in order to practise our handwriting ... and I _think_ we were supposed to memorize them ... but I don't remember any of them now, not even titles.

But they were definitely short 'child-friendly' things (like 'nursery rhymes') ~ nothing like Shakespeare


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## Garbuz

When I went to school (approx. the same time as ewie), we used to learn a lot by heart. I can't say I was good at it, maybe that's why I remember very little of it now. When I was taking an entrance exam in literature it was my weakest point. I still don't know whether a bad memory for poems is my individual defect or the teacher failed to train me how to do it properly. 
I don't know what the state of things at school today is, but seeing how college students can't tell Pushkin from Shakespeare, I would say that poetry is not among the top priorities at school now.


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## SusanBryan

I agree with Garbuz, students nowadays don´t have a proper literal background. I sometimes believe that none of them read, not at least Shakespeare or Pushkin, perhaps Larsson and Brown. Anyway poetry as nursery rhymes are a tool for educational purposes which consists not only in learning by heart but also to get more vocabulary.


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## Vanda

Yes, my generation and all the generations before me, and maybe 2 or 3 generations after me used to memorize poems. I knew many poems by heart. 
Nowadays what I see is people reading poems (when they do, because very few teachers would ask that) not saying them by heart. I think it is a shame! It is a great loss for children that don't have the opportunity to learn how to present themselves in public, to get to know our classics, to exercise memorizing in this image globalized world of TV and internet. In the end everybody loses.
What a relief knowing this is  not our ''_privilege_'' and it is a global (?) issue!


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## Malti

For the English Literature GCSE and A-Level exams I took (they're just exams at the end of high school, and this was in 2006 and 2007) we were required to quote from the examined texts (including poems, but also the plays and novels) without having the texts there, which meant you needn't remember the entire thing, but the more you remembered the better as the more chance you'd be able to produce something relevant to the question in the exam. This means I can still recite lots of poems by Phillip Larkin, Carol Ann Duffy, Seamus Heany, etc. (And a fair few passages from King Lear, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wuthering Heights, and so on.) So memorising poems in itself wasn't a set task, but it was an implicit requirement of the course.

I don't remember much from primary school, although we did have learn On the Ning Nang Nong by Spike Milligan by heart for a performance.


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## Mahaodeh

Up to my knowledge, all Arabic schools require that students memorise poems and to a lesser degree prose. Of course one can not memorse it all, but we use to memorise at least 10 or 15 verses of every poem we studied; students still do that up to this day.

We even had contests in those poems, the more you memorse the better chance you have of winning. It starts at primary school through secondary school till college; I'm sure that those who specialse in Arabic or anything related (such as Islamic studies) memorised peomes even in college.

We were not required to memorise anything in any other language though, so I'm afraid I can't quote Shakespear  - but I can quote some Arab peots that lived 1500 years ago.


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## Frank78

We had to learn poems throughout my whole time at school from primary school to grammar school (1985-1998). After we learnt them we had to recite them in front of the class. Of course with a proper intonation. 

Two of the worst/longest I remember were these:
http://ingeb.org/Lieder/werreite.html

http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Die_Bürgschaft
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Hostage


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## Tagarela

Hi,

Encolpius, well, it depends on what you mean have to memorize. No one would deny, I think, that every language teacher employes poems, good prose and song lyrics into their classes to give examples of good usage of classes and also everyone have somehow, besides "pure" grammar classes, Literature classes, in which every language has its own canone and after reading some authors and text several times, for sure we would remember some verses and famous paragraphs, as for Brazil, I could give some examples, _Meus oito anos_ by Casimiro de Abreu,  _No meio do caminho_ by Drummond, some paragraphs by Machado de Assis and others, Vanda and our Brazilians fellows shall agree with me .
But I don't remember of any task in which I had to declame a poem or big text and if I fail something bad would happen to me. Only once, in a poetry exhibition, in which some students of the class had to presentate poems by heart to our parents and friends - but of course we trained for that. 

I agree that reading poems and good literature is really worthy for language learning and teaching and also for personal culture. However, only memorizing a lot of texts don't say very much if the person really doesn't understand them or feel the message in between the lines. It's enough to me to know some lines by heart and when I need to I'll look for the entire text - but with enough literally cultural background to discuss it reasonable and not taking every information from search engines, or whoever's blog or profile in networks. (Going off-topic perhaps) I wouldn't say that TV is to blame if youth nowadays don't read poetry and general literature anymore. Parents have a big roll on that, my parents always gave me books as gift, and I've ended up enjoying reading more than they do.  

Good bye.:


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## ernest_

In my days, "Christmas poems" were popular. Every year we were taught a different poem related to Christmas, and then we would recite it on the last day of school before holidays, as far as I remember. This is part of a tradition according to which the children recite a poem on Christmas day after lunch in front of the rest of their families. More recently, the government have attempted to get rid of any reference to Christmas in schools, which was to be called "Winter Holidays", but the conservatives have managed to stop them.


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## ajo fresco

ernest_ said:


> In my days, "Christmas poems" were popular. Every year we were taught a different poem related to Christmas, and then we would recite it on the last day of school before holidays, as far as I remember. This is part of a tradition according to which the children recite a poem on Christmas day after lunch in front of the rest of their families. More recently, the government have attempted to get rid of any reference to Christmas in schools, which was to be called "Winter Holidays", but the conservatives have managed to stop them.



I went to Catholic school for 12 years, so I don't know if my experience mirrors the whole of America.  We did spend a great deal of time reading literature and memorizing poems in elementary school and high school.

Your mention of Christmas poems reminds me of one poem that most Americans know, and can still quote, regardless of where they went to school:  "The Night Before Christmas."


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## cuchuflete

ewie said:


> ... a question about memorizing things: _I can't remember ~ school was *so* long ago_
> 
> I know that when I was at primary school (1969-75) ...


 Oh you brash young puppy!  Trying to make me feel old just because I was teaching at a university while you were in primary school...

Well here's how it was in the paleolithic days of my youth.  We had to memorize and perform a long poem by Walt Whitman in primary school. After that, I don't recall any mandatory memorization except the beginning of Evangeline and the Arcadiens.  I still remember the opening lines, but not the rest of it.This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
​I don't remember if we hated the 8th grade literature teacher or Longfellow more.

As for those who lament that the world is different now than in their youth, I do not join you.  My sons went to school decades after I did.  They learned in different ways, but studied some of the same literature.  They are both readers.  Exposure to good books, and contact with a few inspired and inspiring teachers, were good supplements to our reading at home. 

​


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## pickarooney

We (late 70s to early 90s in Ireland) learned poems and excerpts from plays by heart from pre-school up to school-leaving age, in English and Irish.


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## federicoft

It was certainly common practice in the Italian school system to learn poems by heart until a couple decades ago. Nowadays it is somewhat less common as postmodern teaching methods tend to discourage rote memorization, but there still are some poems which pupils would inevitably learn and recite during their school years, and anyone with a modicum of education has to know. Amongst them there are: 


St Francis of Assisi's _Cantico delle Creature_
Jacopone da Todi's _Donna de Paradiso_
Excerpts from Dante's _Inferno_ (particularly Cantos I, V, VI and XXVI)
_Erano i capei d'oro a l'aura sparsi _and _Chiare, fresce e dolci acque _by Petrarch
Foscolo's _Dei Sepolcri_, _Alla sera_, _A Zacinto_, _In morte del fratello Giovanni_
Leopardi's _Infinito_, _La quiete dopo la tempesta_, _Il sabato del villaggio_, _Ultimo canto di Saffo_, _Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell'Asia_, _All'Italia _and _A Silvia_
passages from Manzoni's _The Bethroted _(especially the incipit and the "Farewell to the mountains")
Pascoli's _Lavandare_, _Novembre_, _La cavalla storna_ and others
Carducci's _Pianto antico_ and _Davanti San Guido_
D'Annunzio's _La pioggia nel pineto_
other poems by Ungaretti, Quasimodo, Montale and Saba.
Old patriotic poems, such as _La spigolatrice di Sapri_, were very popular in the past, but now have almost completely disappeared from schools.


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## WadiH

We most certainly did.  Memorizing poems is not such a bad thing, especially since traditional Arabic poetry has a very regular rhythm.  I actually still try to memorize a little bit of poetry even now as an adult, and so does my father.

But if you think memorizing poetry is bad, you should try memorizing entire paragraphs of prose! (yes they actually made us do that at school)


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## enoo

Frank78 said:


> We had to learn poems throughout my whole time at school from primary school to grammar school (1985-1998). After we learnt them we had to recite them in front of the class. Of course with a proper intonation.



Same in France, it was a common thing, at least when I went to primary school (~1986-1993) and before (at least, I remember my grand-mother telling me she had taugh poems to her pupils). And we were given grades based on how well we remembered the poem, and the intonation we used, argh... 
At that time, we often had to learn La Fontaine's Fables, but now  I can remember only parts of them. 

I searched a bit on the net, and it seems that the "récitation" (that was the name) was supposed to be taught again in 2008 ... so I guess it that it wasn't taught anymore at some point before, but I didn't manage to find out when.


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## Encolpius

Thank you all for the interesting answers. In Hungary it is still a must at school (I think in the Czech republic as well), but I think it is all not a matter of country but era.


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## xmarabout

In Belgium, most of the kids have to learn small songs and little poems even in the kindergarden as well as in Primary school. Later (Secondary school), it is more some extract from the theatre.


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## chamyto

I remember when I studied at Primary School , that we had to memorize poems by heart, and then say them to him.
He said that it´s a good way to train our memory and brain.


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## Uncle Bob

When I was at secondary school ('50s) in England not only did we have to learn poems and lumps of Shapespeare but we had a written test the next day. _Punctuation_ was taken into account. So, rather than following the meaning/rhythm of a poem, it was remembered rather as: "The capital Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold comma Capital And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold semicolon etc."(Byron). The aim, I think, was to exercise the memory rather than any literary appreciation. It did work and I can still 'do' Hamlet's soliloquy in less that 25 seconds, though I've forgotten the punctuation. (Who needs to know what it's about?!)


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## ewhite

Not a poem, by any means, and barely a song, but due to particularly inspired teacher in the 3rd grade or 4th grade, way back in the 50s, I am able to sing a list of the  prepositions in the English language, in alphabetical order, to the tune of Anchors Aweigh.

Sing with me:

_about above across after against
along among around at
before behind below beneath
beneath beside between 
beyond by down_
_Are prepositions when you see them followed by a common noun!_


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## Vanda

Uncle Bob said:


> When I was at secondary school ('50s) in England not only did we have to learn poems and lumps of Shapespeare but we had a written test the next day. _Punctuation_ was taken into account. So, rather than following the meaning/rhythm of a poem, it was remembered rather as: "The capital Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold comma Capital And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold semicolon etc."(Byron). The aim, I think, was to exercise the memory rather than any literary appreciation. It did work and I can still 'do' Hamlet's soliloquy in less that 25 seconds, though I've forgotten the punctuation. (Who needs to know what it's about?!)


After reading everybody's post, it looks to me that most countries used to do pretty much the same things in this field in the past but they have changed nowadays for more pragmatic things.


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## slowik

Frank78 said:


> We had to learn poems throughout my whole time at school from primary school to grammar school (1985-1998). After we learnt them we had to recite them in front of the class. Of course with a proper intonation.


It's the same in Poland. A must for any Polish pupil is the _Inwokacja_, the introduction to our national epic "Pan Tadeusz" which I remember learning twice - once in junior high and again in high school. Good intonation was a plus but I don't think my teachers were very strict about it. I also remember having to learn our national anthem when I was 9 or 10 (no surprise here, I guess), a passage from "Pan Tadeusz" of my choice and a couple of poems throughout the whole course of my compulsory education.

And it was actually even more serious before the WWII, when every student had to know one book (i.e. a part) of "Pan Tadeusz" by heart. For your infromation: "Pan Tadeusz" is divided into 12 books. One book contains about 900 verses of exactly 13 syllables each.


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## MOMO2

federicoft said:


> It was certainly common practice in the Italian school system to learn poems by heart until a couple decades ago. Nowadays it is somewhat less common as postmodern teaching methods tend to discourage rote memorization, but there still are some poems which pupils would inevitably learn and recite during their school years, and anyone with a modicum of education has to know. Amongst them there are:
> 
> 
> St Francis of Assisi's _Cantico delle Creature_
> Jacopone da Todi's _Donna de Paradiso_
> Excerpts from Dante's _Inferno_ (particularly Cantos I, V, VI and XXVI)
> _Erano i capei d'oro a l'aura sparsi _and _Chiare, fresce e dolci acque _by Petrarch
> Foscolo's _Dei Sepolcri_, _Alla sera_, _A Zacinto_, _In morte del fratello Giovanni_
> Leopardi's _Infinito_, _La quiete dopo la tempesta_, _Il sabato del villaggio_, _Ultimo canto di Saffo_, _Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell'Asia_, _All'Italia _and _A Silvia_
> passages from Manzoni's _The Bethroted _(especially the incipit and the "Farewell to the mountains")
> Pascoli's _Lavandare_, _Novembre_, _La cavalla storna_ and others
> Carducci's _Pianto antico_ and _Davanti San Guido_
> D'Annunzio's _La pioggia nel pineto_
> other poems by Ungaretti, Quasimodo, Montale and Saba.
> Old patriotic poems, such as _La spigolatrice di Sapri_, were very popular in the past, but now have almost completely disappeared from schools.


 
For many years pupils have not memorized verses, but now in many schools they do again.
8 year old pupils do have to memorize verses and lessons aswell.

Momo


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## Hakro

When I went to school in the beginning of the fifties, it was very common to make kids memorize poems (especially songs) and other short texts and lists. I was told, just as Chamyto said (#19), that it's important for learning to learn. 

I can still say any time the list of all Finnish pronouns or the prophets of the Old Testament, for example. The first list has been useful for correct writing, the second one for crosswords.

I once met a Swede, of about my age, who could say by heart long poems (in Swedish) of our _Finnish_ national poet, J.L. Runeberg. I was astonished, but of course these poems were originally written in Swedish and they are appreciated very high in Sweden (higher than in Finland, maybe?). Anyway, it's obvious that memorizing poems has been common in Sweden, too.

If a personal opinion is allowed, I'd say that memorizing is important. This is how we have saved a large part of our human history, and still there is no better way to save a family history: memorizing sayings, anecdotes, names etc. If you have never learned to memorize you may have difficulties to remember things like this.


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## curly

pickarooney said:


> We (late 70s to early 90s in Ireland) learned poems and excerpts from plays by heart from pre-school up to school-leaving age, in English and Irish.


 

This was true as least until 2008. Theorectically we only had to learn important quote but in practice it ended up being easier to just retain the entire poem in the right order than leave out the two or three "unimportant" lines.


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## Pedro y La Torre

curly said:


> This was true as least until 2008. Theorectically we only had to learn important quote but in practice it ended up being easier to just retain the entire poem in the right order than leave out the two or three "unimportant" lines.



I can't remember learning off any poems for Irish (which is probably why I almost failed) but for English we had to learn off 3/4 poems and be ready to quote them at will in the Leaving Cert. Some of them were fairly long as well, Emily Bishop's The Fish is one which sticks in my mind, and I still can't fathom what the usefulness of it was supposed to be.

That was in 2006, I don't know if it has changed since.


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## sanne78

The Netherlands:
I went to school in the seventies, and we never had to learn a text or poem by heart. I doubt that pupils are having to do it nowadays...


My children go to school here in France, and they regularly (at least in primary school) have to learn a poem by heart.


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## Rallino

In Turkey they most certainly memorize. The first thing to memorize is probably the national hymn. It has 10 quatrains, so that's a little pain _in the derriere_ to memorize it all.

And then, 23th of March is children's day in Turkey, and it is ironic that this day is devoted to them, for their joy; yet they're expected to memorize poetry and then recite them in front of the entire school for the joy of others.


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## Outlandish

In Egypt there is an Islamic school system called Al Azhar. This system is based on memorization. The children there memorize huge curricula. They should memorize the whole Quran (more than 6000 verses) and a lot of poems

Their Arabic syllabus enforces on the students the memorization of a very famous poem about Arabic grammar. It is called _Alfeyat Ibn Malik_, or (the one thousand verses composed by Ibn Malik) which sums up the rules of Arabic grammar.


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## Blas de Lezo

I was born in 1980 in Spain. And yes, we have to memorize poems, at primary school:

Al olmo viejo
hendido por el rayo
y en su mitad partido...
[Machado]

And also in high school:

Con cien cañones por banda
viento en popa a toda vela
no corta el mar sino vuela
un velero bergatín.
[Espronceda]


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## Maja

Yes, in Serbia too. 
I went to school from 1984 - 1996, and both in Primary and Secondary school we had to recite poems for a grade. Even in foreign language lessons (English and Russian), although not as many as in Serbian.


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## Dmitry_86

Encolpius said:


> Hello, when I went to primary and secondary school (1980-1992) we had to memorize verses from poems and I still remember a couple of poems by heart even though I am not working in that field. A younger friend of mine from abroad claimed they did not have to. Is that or modern or regional habit? *Did or do school children have to memorize poems, verses in your country? *In the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary children have to memorize poems. I can't imagine someone can't quote Hamlet or lines like that. Thanks.



I finished school in 2003, which is not so long ago as did some people who have already replied to this thread. In Russia it quite common to learn poems by heart. Russian literature is world-famous for numerous magnificent poets who have made their contribution to the development of the world poetry: Pushkin, Lermontov, Tutchev, etc. For US it is a tradition to learn their poems and cite them in life. During my studying I had to learn a lot of poems and I even remember some of them now. In the elementary school children learn a lot, but poems are normally short. In the secondary school the load is largest. From the 5th till the 9th grades inclusive school curriculums contain many poems that have to be analyzed and then learnt and reproduced without a book. When a pupil is in the graduation classes (10th and 11th) they usually discuss serious drama works and very rarely learn any poems. The reason is probably that the final composition they have to write before graduation has to do with drama works and never with poems, sonets and other similar things.


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## Smithy73

My grandmother had to remember poems and Shakespeare e.t.c. but thank goodness they've got rid of that pointless way of teaching now in Britain.


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## dunescratcheur

When  I was at school in the 60s ( UK private) learning poems by heart was the order of the day. 

My young daughter (also private school) seems to learn a lot fewer poems and often they are just extracts. I have the impression that this has fallen out of favour in private schooling but cannot comment on state education.

To my shame, I haven't been able to remember more than a few lines from any of the reams of stuff I was made to learn, with the exception of this gem, which I was able to reproduce for my daughter when starting her first term of Latin:

"Caesar ad sum iam forte, 
Brutus aderat,
Caesar sic in omnibus,
Brutus inis at"

See, an expensive education pays off in the end


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## sakvaka

ewhite said:


> Not a poem, by any means, and barely a song, but due to particularly inspired teacher in the 3rd grade or 4th grade, way back in the 50s, I am able to sing a list of the  prepositions in the English language, in alphabetical order, to the tune of Anchors Aweigh.



This is close to the stupidest song I've ever heard (sing along!). 
*Melody: Twinkle twinkle little star.*

_Aa bee see dee ee äf gee, hoo ii jii koo äl äm än. Oo pee kuu är äs tee tuu, vee äks yy tseta oo ää öö: kaikki nämä tarvitaan, lukemaan kun opitaan._

("A b c d e... z å ä ö: all these are needed, when you teach yourself to read")


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## ajo fresco

sakvaka said:


> This is close to the stupidest song I've ever heard (sing along!).
> *Melody: Twinkle twinkle little star.*
> 
> _Aa bee see dee ee äf gee, hoo ii jii koo äl äm än. Oo pee kuu är äs tee tuu, vee äks yy tseta oo ää öö: kaikki nämä tarvitaan, lukemaan kun opitaan._
> 
> ("A b c d e... z å ä ö: all these are needed, when you teach yourself to read")



Same thing here -- We also sing the alphabet in English to the melody of Twinkle twinkle little star! 

I learned the ending as: "Now I know my A-B-Cs.  Tell me what you think  of me."  

But I've also heard kids singing: "Now I know my A-B-Cs. Next time won't you sing with me?" 
(Sorry for straying a bit off topic)


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## SaritaSarang

That is something one would have to do in their English class in school. None of my teachers ( here in the U.S) ever made us memorize poems. I took a speech class one time and had to memorize a poem, but that was just for practicing giving speeches.


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