How to Memorize Poetry

Here are some tips on how to memorize poetry. You can find poems to memorize in our poems section.

How to Memorize Poetry

Here are some various ways to remember a poem:

1. Divide the poem into “beats” (like in method acting)
2. Create an image for a keyword or keywords on each line and use the loci method. See also the memory palaces page.
3. Extract keywords and then chain them into a story.
4. Line-repeat method. See this page for details.
5. Copy the poem by writing it onto another sheet of paper

Scroll down for a list of poems to memorize.

List of Poems for Memorization

An easy poem to start with is The Eagle by Alfred Tennyson. Here’s the whole poem:

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Here are some more:

Beginner

• “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening” - 1923 - Robert Frost - 4 stanzas, 16 lines
• “Neither Out Far Nor In Deep” - 1936 - Robert Frost - 4 stanzas, 16 lines
• “Jabberwocky” - 1872 - Lewis Carroll - 28 lines

Intermediate

• “Ozymandias” - 1818 - Percy Bysshe Shelley - sonnet
• “The Walrus and the Carpenter” - 1871 - Lewis Carroll - 18 stanzas, 108 lines
• “Invictus - Willaim Ernest Henley

Advanced

• “The Raven” - 1845 - Edgar Allan Poe - 108 lines
• “The Cremation of Sam McGee” - Robert Service - 69 lines
• “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” - Robert Service - 58 lines
• Beowulf prologue (Old English, 52 lines) — sample

Other webpages with lists of poems

• List of Poems to Memorize
• Ideas for Poems to Memorize (discussion)