小说与文学2020thecut.com
现在正是背诵一首诗的最佳时机
Now Is the Perfect Time to Memorize a Poem
导读
这篇短文主张当下正是背诵诗歌的好时机：背诵不需要设备、不占空间，还能在混乱的日子里给内心提供秩序与陪伴。对写作者而言，它提供了一个慢读文本的方法——逐字记忆会逼你注意诗人为何选这个词而不是那个词，是训练语感与节奏感的低成本练习。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
把背诵当成精读：每记住一句都要追问作者为何用这个词，而不是你脑中自然冒出的近义词。
- 02
利用碎片化的"废时间"（等编译、通勤、排队）每次记几行，几周就能拿下一篇长诗。
- 03
选有节奏、有故事性的诗（如《乌鸦》《Jabberwocky》）先练，韵律本身会帮你记住句子，也教你叙事的节拍。
- 04
背熟后大声朗诵或表演，让文字从纸面变成声音，这能直接改善你写作时的句子呼吸感。
HN 评论精选
长诗的格律本身就是记忆的支架，改写与背诵可以成为数十年的长期写作练习。
作者大学时参加中世纪复原社团，把民间故事《海水为什么是咸的》改写成五步抑扬格长诗，供晚会朗诵。第一次是照着 80 年代中期手写的铅笔稿念的，之后他决定背不下来就不再表演——结果断断续续练了三十多年，直到去年才终于无稿完整背出。如今疫情期间他睡前在脑中默诵它助眠，效果出奇地好。
lisper查看英文原文
When I was in college I was a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism (https://www.sca.org/). To provide an evening's entertainment, I adapted a folk tale, Why the Sea is Salt, into iambic pentameter. http://www.flownet.com/ron/salt.txt It is meant to be performed vocally, not read. The first time I had to read it from my original manuscript (and it was a manuscript, written by hand with a pencil because this was the mid-80s). After that I decided I wouldn't perform it again until I had it all memorized. It took me over 30 years to get to the point where I was confident I had it memorized well enough to perform it without notes, but last year, over thirty years after its debut, I finally did it. Then Covid happened. Now I recite it to myself in my head to help me fall asleep. It works remarkably well.
背诗既是脑力锻炼，也能让你偷学诗人独特的措辞和叙事节奏。
换个方式锻炼大脑永远不嫌晚。他高中起就为好玩背诗：有些励志，有些纯属胡闹——《Jabberwocky》差点把他逼疯；惠特曼懂得怎么活；最爱仍是爱伦·坡的《乌鸦》，最初是被《辛普森一家》的缩编版吸引，但坡真的太会讲故事，那节奏、那律动绝了。学外语最难的一关就是读懂它的诗，普希金、莱蒙托夫原文都是珍宝。最妙的时刻是发现诗人用另一种说法讲出了你正想的事，比如玛丽·奥利弗的《夏日》。另外，诗还是密码的好来源——没人像诗人那样组合词语。
jimmyswimmy查看英文原文
It's always a good time to exercise your brain in a different way. I started memorizing poetry while in high school just for the fun of it. Some I found motivational, some just silly - Jabberwocky almost broke me. Whitman - that man knew how to live. My favorite of all remains Poe's The Raven. It was the Simpson's shortened take on that poem that first drew my attention, but man, did Poe know how to tell a story, and the meter! Such a rhythm, such a beat that man had. In learning other languages one of the greatest challenges of all is to understand their poetry. Pushkin, Lermontov in their original are treasures. If only I could understand them all without always keeping my dictionary handy. It is always wonderful to find a poet's expressions when they have chosen a different way to say what I'm thinking. Mary Oliver's Summer Day is just a celebration of the wonders of life. Also, this stuff is a great source of passwords. Nobody puts words together the way poets do.
记忆迫使你逐词思考作者的选择，是与前人作品建立深层连接的方式。
他本不算诗歌爱好者，去年打算每月背一首，计划完全可行，却因懒只完成了四首。但背过之后你对一首诗的理解会深得多：你得琢磨每一个词，有时大脑想替换成另一个词，你就得想清楚诗人为什么偏偏选了这个而不是那个更顺手的。这像参与一场伟大的对话——诗人们彼此阅读，串成一条通往远古的链条，你能看出谁在回应谁，明知对方永远不会回话，连接却真实存在。在《巴斯特·斯克鲁格斯的歌谣》里听出《奥兹曼迪亚斯》被朗诵，就像看到老友在电影里惊喜客串。当然，如果你有表演欲，这也是个不错的聚会小把戏。
darkerside查看英文原文
I've never been huge on poetry, but decided last year to memorize a poem each month. Totally doable, but I only made it through about four. My own laziness. You get to know a poem so much better when you memorize it. You need to think about each word. Sometimes your brain wants to substitute another word and you have to think about why the poet chose the one they did instead of the one that might feel natural. It feels like engaging in a great conversation. These poets all read each other's work, going back in this timeless chain into the distant past. And you can tell when one is responding to the words of another, who they know can never answer back, but there's a connection all the same. Recognizing Ozymandias being recited in a Ballad of Buster Scruggs short felt like seeing a dear friend make a surprise cameo in a movie. Plus, if you've got a flair for the dramatic, it's a neat party trick.
把每天必然浪费的等待时间切成一两分钟的小块，足以背下并长期保留一整首长诗。
他大学毕业做工程师时背下了《J·阿尔弗雷德·普鲁弗洛克的情歌》：当时 .NET 代码库编译要三四分钟，他把诗打印出来贴在工位上，每次编译就背几行，几周就背完了全部 140 行——此前他从未做过这种事。十二年后他仍记得约一半，这诗足够有名，每隔几年就会被人提起，他因此惊艳过朋友和陌生人。如今整首诗像一位老朋友，把等编译的废时间拿来背诗，回报高得出乎意料。
numlocked查看英文原文
I memorized The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock during my first job as an engineer out of college. The .Net codebase would take 3-4 minutes to compile. I printed out the poem and taped it up in my cubicle. On each compilation, I would work on memorizing a few lines. I had never done anything like it before but memorized all 140 lines in just a few weeks. 12 years later I still remember about 50% of it. It’s a famous enough poem that it comes up once every few years and I impress some friends or strangers. At this point the entire poem just feels like an old friend. It has been surprisingly rewarding investment of otherwise wasted time while waiting for a build to finish.
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