Alan Jacobs


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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.”

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/01/why-we-should-memorize.html#ixzz2JHJp2MNR
Special thanks to Unthinkable Mind’s AMYGDALA for bringing this to our attention.