When I was in university my mother asked me what classes I was taking. She was a little puzzled by my choice of English as a major. When I told her that one of my courses was Poetry, she asked whether it consisted of learning the poems by heart. No, of course not I told her, thinking her question betrayed her unfamiliarity with higher education, her only reference being the high school classes she took before leaving school around age 15 or 16. Even though neither of my parents attended college they put a great emphasis on getting a degree, surmising correctly that in this new country they were in and new era, degrees had currency. During their working life the lack of a degree was no obstacle to getting ahead and they both instinctively knew how to maneuver through their careers. I thought of that long-ago interaction when my assignment for an online poetry class was to learn a poem by heart. There is something in the stamping of a writer's words on your memory that imprints their intentions there. The imagery comes alive in a deeper more resonant way. The meaning rises up off the page and becomes three-dimensional. A writer whose name I can't remember said that they once wrote out whole Hemingway stories word for word in an attempt to see what made them tick. I chose Digging, a poem I come back to as a sort of ideal in the form. By learning it by heart maybe some of its magic can find its way into my blood stream.
 

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