thenearsightedmonkey:

Dear Unthinkable Mind students,

Why memorize poetry?

“The best argument for verse memorization may be that it provides us with knowledge of a qualitatively and physiologically different variety: you take the poem inside you, into your brain chemistry if not your blood, and you know it at a deeper, bodily level than if you simply read it off a screen. Robson puts the point succinctly: “If we do not learn by heart, the heart does not feel the rhythms of poetry as echoes or variations of its own insistent beat.”

Special thanks to Unthinkable Mind’s AMYGDALA for bringing this to our attention.