tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8072280968054782498.post7670030471903659640..comments2023-06-29T16:16:25.565+01:00Comments on graveney marsh: Bring Back W E HenleyLaurie Dugganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16324479044544427139noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8072280968054782498.post-27968978969232925582008-04-22T05:36:00.000+01:002008-04-22T05:36:00.000+01:00Hi Laurie,I like the distinction (mentioned to me ...Hi Laurie,<BR/><BR/>I like the distinction (mentioned to me by Malouf but perhaps mentioned elsewhere) between 'rote learning' and 'learning by heart'.<BR/><BR/>I agree, a poem etched into the memory because it was learned rote as a child might be otherwise 'forgettable'. It could be argued that learning something 'by heart', is slightly, though crucially, different. <BR/><BR/>I guess I'd draw the distinction (which is quite possible a figment) between one being in the predicament of having to learn a poem, and one wanting to learn it - or even committing it to memory unintentionally, because of a compulsion to reread it. <BR/><BR/>That is, in this view, learning 'by heart' can only be done by someone whose 'heart is in it', as it were. <BR/><BR/>Rhyming can help, but it seems just as likely to get in the way. It can make a poem more memorable, but only by making us forget, for a moment, what the poem is saying. In this way it can be distracting - our ears are pricked by the pattern, nothing more; the heart can get lost... rhyme as the mnemonic that induces a certain kind of forgetfulness, perhaps?<BR/><BR/>jayajshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10440529984817543609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8072280968054782498.post-79964211150245257572008-04-18T00:40:00.000+01:002008-04-18T00:40:00.000+01:00Nicely argued post - such restraint in the face of...Nicely argued post - such restraint in the face of the Queen's English Society nonsense, which seems (at least on the face of it from this distance) to be silly and hopelessly ignorant. Milton doesn't use rhyme (except in the sonnets), and 'Samson Agonistes' has some remarkably experimental looseness ... so he's out as well? <BR/><BR/>I was puzzled a little by your choice of Henley in the title. Some of the free verse passages in his very personal sequence (almost 'confessional' by the standards of the day) 'In Hospital' (1875?) seem to stand in the direct line of development towards early Modernism.David Lumsdenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04483172967435196277noreply@blogger.com