All of my children will always know why a person would be “stopping by the woods on a snowy evening.” They learned all about those snowy woods in Seventh Grade English at St. Matthews School--where their English teacher required all students to memorize her favorite Robert Frost poem. Part of the Seventh Grade ritual every year was memorizing the infamous poem, practicing it over and over, and then proudly reciting it in front of the class. There’s not a St. Matthews seventh grader around who will ever forget “promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.”
Having sent four children through Mrs. Pickard’s class, Frost’s words are firmly imprinted in my brain as well.
But those words are not the only poetry I know. I too had English teachers who believed in making students memorize favorite poems. I, and everyone else at Marshall High School in the 1960’s, will always know that nothing “is so rare as a day in June” and that “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day.” The words of James Lowell and William Shakespeare are just as firmly etched on my brain and pop out with greater frequency than I’m sure Mrs. Elliot and Miss Stephens ever imagined.
I have sixty four years of information and knowledge knocking around in my head, but most of it has accumulated bit by bit on top of itself, and almost none of it is place-specific. I know a lot of things, but for the most part I can’t tell you where I learned any specific piece of information or who taught me something. But memorizing poetry is different. I’m not sure if it’s because the task is concrete and finite, or if it’s just because there is such a feeling of accomplishment when the piece is finally mastered perfectly.
I only know that at least once a year in early summer the sun shines, a warm breeze blows, clouds drift across the sky, and I find myself saying “then if ever come perfect days,” and remembering the smiling face of my old teacher.
I think that it’s just about certain that when my kids reach the age of sixty on snowy nights they will remember the smiling face of Karen Pickard.
