I have to be honest, I don't actually read that much poetry lol. But when I do, it tends to be classic, older stuff, because it either

1. It's survived this long
2. It usually has a nice flow to it
3. The meaning is especially profound

Some examples of poems I like

Catholic Wine - Hillaire Belloc (In vino veritas lol)

The Zode in the Road - Doctor Suess

Le dormeur du val - Arthur Rimbaud

But there's one thing I've always been suck at, and that's reciting poetry from memory.

So when I came across this video by the American mnemonist Nelson Dellis, I was heavily intrigued.

HOW TO MEMORIZE LINES INSTANTLY (SERIOUSLY)

To summarize the video, to memorize any passage of text, poetry, movie quotes, etc quickly

1. Read out loud the passage a few times
2. Write down the first letter of each word, marking the punctuation, and keeping the structure of the lines the same.
3. Read out loud a few times the passage using only the letters you wrote down. (Refer back to the original as needed)
4. Recite the passage out loud without looking at the original text or the letter sheet.
5. Impress your friends at the next party!

So I watch the video, and I'm all like, "It can't be that easy."

I shit you not, it was that easy.

Round 1 - A Música Barata : Carlos Drummond de Andrade

This poem took me about 10 minutes to learn, and was relatively easy to get going from memory. It does help that Portuguese is the foreign language I've spoken the most over the last two years.

What was interesting was that I got to the recitation from memory, was real impressed with myself, and then I went to eat some dinner.

30 minutes later, I was cleaning up, and I had the thought to recite it again. And I was able to! Albeit with a little bit slower amount of recall. But once I had dusted it off, I could recite it clear and with quicker recall.

Round 2 - Эпиграмма : А.С. Пушкин

This poem/epigram was a lot shorter, but it's also very old Russian, so I barely understood any of it. But that was alright, as I could read and pronounce it, so in theory I'd be able to recite and memorize it.

This took me about 15 minutes to memorize completely. I believe it was because

• I didn't really understand the poem
• I was probably fudging the pronunciation hard
• Cyrillic, despite not being that difficult to read, was harder to parse during the letters step.
• Russian words are not like English words, so there was less to hook onto my memory
• Definitely a lot harder to get into a flow, since word stress is very different in Russian

I had a similar experience with this poem where I stopped after the initial recitation from memory, did something else, and then tried to recite again after 30 minutes.

I was still able to do it, but my mind would blank out hard for a few seconds after one or two lines before I eventually would recall the next part of the poem. It did get easier, but it took a few more recitations of the poem out loud to really get it good and out loud.

Nelson did address this in the video, as he stated that this technique is really good for getting the lines into your head quickly. Although, for better recall at a future date, it might be best to use a memory palace for better retention.

The perk of this technique, however, is that it does not require as much initial setup and energy as the memory palace technique takes.

The downside being, you will have to practice the recitation more times to really help solidify it into your long term memory.

Round 3 - The Second Day

I wanted to try this again with some other type of text besides poetry, but then I thought of prayers, as they sort of go in the space between poetry and almost like formal request writing. So I played around with learning a few Catholic prayers such as the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Apostle's Creed. I did these in Portuguese, because I already know these in English lol.

It went pretty well, the Our Father and the Hail Mary probably took me about 5 minutes each to recite from memory, as they're pretty short. The Apostle's Creed took me closer to 10 minutes, just because it was that much longer, and there were more words in it that I didn't actually know in Portuguese.

I even stopped after reciting all these prayers, and tried reciting from memory the two poems from the previous day, and found I could still recall them completely, with even less hesitation than on day one.

So all in all, I would deem this a worthy technique for quickly learning texts such as poems, prayers, introductions, dialogues, speeches, and other passages. Even if you don't use this for foreign languages, it would be good in your native language especially, as the letters step would trigger more easily the next word in the passage. You do have many more years experience in your native language after all. :))

Hope this helps, and let me know if any of you try this technique out!

Para a vida e para a aprendizagem,

Tom