Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22832 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Customer Reviews

A wonderful collection of poems
By Heart is a collection of 101 great poems.

Says who? Says Ted Hughes, the late poet laureate. The introduction alone is worth the price of the book; Hughes tells how to memorize poems using the creative, intuitive right brain.

The collection includes old favourites by Robert Frost, Coleridge, Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot and Emily Dickenson. But everyone will find revelations here. Brilliant poems by poets you've never heard of. Or brilliant poems by poets you've heard of but just never come across. For me, the poems of a previous poet laureate - John Betjemen - were a wonderful discovery.

As a parent and teacher, I highly recommend this book to parents and other teachers. These are poems to teach your children! You might want to start with 'The Eagle' by Tennyson:

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.

Good book of poems
I never cared for poetry before, but this book has stirred me to learn about 30 poems so far and I'm very grateful for Ted Hughes challenging me to learn them 'by heart'. I actually bought the book for my wife a few years ago, and I only looked at it after hearing some quote of Macbeth's famous 'Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow' speech on the radio and thinking I should make some effort to learn it (since I'd done Macbeth at school). The speech is in this book, and from there and I've been going through the book picking out poems that either I vaguely knew or liked the sound of. I practice while driving to work, and it's surprising how the poems stick in your head once you've managed to remember them once. I even managed to memorise Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey' which is over 5 pages long!

The only bad thing about this book is there's really a lot of poems about death or misery in one form or another, which perhaps reflects Hughes' outlook on life (I don't know much about him, but he died soon after this book was published, I think).

Despite this, I highly recommend the book as it has some great poems in it, and it managed to single-handedly convert me into someone who actually likes poetry now.

Been there. Done that.
Sorry but this was a great disappointment. As a collection it bears a close resemblance to a school primer and offers no signs of the poems having been chosen except on the basis they are famous. Some of them are really not even technically that good.Maybe it is too much to hope that a good poet can show clear strong taste of his own. Would not recommend it except to a reader who does not know any poems and is starting from scratch. Otherwise a poor choice for a bookclub. A pity.