By Heart (Faber poetry) [Paperback]

Ted Hughes (Author)

Book Description

Series: Faber poetry | Publication Date: October 6, 1997

What has happened to the lost art of memorizing poetry? Why do we no longer feel that it is necessary to know the most enduring, beautiful poems in the English language "by heart"? In his introduction, Ted Hughes explains how we can overcome the problem by using a memory system that becomes easier the more frequently it is practised. The collected 101 poems are both personal favourites and particularly well-suited to the method Hughes demonstrates.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ted Hughes was born in Yorkshire. His first book, THE HAWK IN THE RAIN, was published in 1957. Since then he has published many volumes of poetry and prose. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Faber Paperbacks; First Edition, First Printing edition (October 6, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571192637
• ISBN-13: 978-0571192632
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #172,529 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent poetry anthology, June 16, 2007

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T. McLaughlin "Interpretive delirium" (Chatham, NJ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: By Heart (Faber poetry) (Paperback)

It's clear that the editor, Ted Hughes, gave this selection a good deal of thought. The selection was a search to find poems of suitable length for and worthy of memorization. So the term "by heart" functions both in the sense of knowing by memory and feeling something deeply. Anyway, you will find many poems you will want to know by heart: "Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone", "There's a certain Slant of light", "Fear no more the heat o' the Sun" for example, excellent works. Lots of Shakespeare and Yeats, Blake and Dickinson. He has also included Hamlet's "To be..." and Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow..."

Now that the internet has replaced individual mental retention, I suppose this book seems anachronistic, which is too bad. The great English poems are among the few mental constructs will have seemed worth preserving in the future. Furthermore, the capability to remember something exactly is a real gift. Memorization is a mental capacity that is being lost, so too the ability to contemplate. The slowing down to contemplate a subject, which poetry invites us to do, is important if there is ever to be an American civilization. Life without it is quite stupid, not to say exhausting.

Having done this for a while, i.e. memorize poems I love, I can testify to the worthiness of it, not for recitation purposes (no one wants to listen), but because it's a way to knowing the work and the poet more intimately and because it becomes part of you. You finally have something good up there.

It's probably good for the brain as well: poor, distracted thing.

Hughes provides hints on memorization in the introduction, which is somewhat useful, but you have to find your own method, make your own memory palace. The selection of poems is excellent.