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By Heart: “Ulysses” wrapup + New Teasdale “Peace” Challenge

By Megan Willome 14 Comments


Until September, I’d never memorized poetry. It turns out all I needed was a poem, a cup of hot tea, and about five minutes spent outside each day, over the course of a month, to git ‘er done.

The first poem Tweetspeak proposed for this journey was from the last section from Tennyson’s Ulysses. It is a section I had previously printed and saved in a poetry notebook. So when I printed it again and read it aloud again, it felt like running into an old friend.

The first thing I noticed this time was that the poem is in iambic pentameter. As I read it aloud every day, I noticed the beats, five per line. Noticing them made me read it differently — less about punctuation and more about rhythm and sound.

When it comes to form, this poem is perfection. Listen to these S’s:

… and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars …

Memorizing made me notice other bits of alliteration I’d previously missed. It was easy to remember “the sounding furrows” when I noticed that what came next was another F, “for my purpose holds.” Memorizing also made me pay closer attention to word choice. It took me a while to learn that it was “touch” the Happy Isles. I kept wanting it to be “reach,” but “touch” suggests that all Ulysses needs to is touch the hem of the island, as it were.

This poem has inspired readers for over one hundred years. Military leaders have quoted it. Coaches have quoted it. People in dire situations have clung to its last line as an anchor: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” That line is why I first printed the poem, years ago.

But as I tucked the poem in my heart, that line no longer resonated. In my life’s particular dramas, I am often called to yield. The right response may be to not be so strong in will, not so much like Ulysses.

As I sat with the poem and the tea, I wanted to refresh my memory regarding Homer’s legendary Greek hero, which led me to start reading Emily Wilson’s new translation of Homer’s The Odyssey (in iambic pentameter!). Here’s how she renders the first line: “Tell me about a complicated man.”

The more I read the story of Odysseus, aka Ulysses, the more I thought, Poor Penelope. I would not have wanted to be married to this complicated fellow. Can’t he just let that ol’ heart “made weak by time and fate” sit on the front porch with his faithful honey-boo and share tales of derring-do over glasses of iced tea? Must he really “push off” again? Does he need to attempt to move “earth and heaven” one last time? Chill, dude.

So why did Tennyson pick this complicated man as the subject for his poem?

Tennyson wrote “Ulysses” after the death of his dear friend Arthur Hallam. Thus began a ten-year period of isolation, writing only in private, publishing nothing. Tennyson sounds an awful lot like mercurial Ulysses when he said, of that period in his life, “I suffered what seemed to me to shatter all my life so that I desired to die rather than to live.”

Knowing that Tennyson was in a period of profound grief when he wrote these words helped me understand them. It explained the deep sadness I felt the more I sat with the poem and my genmaicha tea each afternoon. It explained why the poet might have wanted to write so stridently and with such conviction. Maybe he was seeking to inspire himself.

These are the thoughts that sprang to mind while sipping, reading, listening, and thinking about “Ulysses.” One day I noticed I had memorized it. But memorizing didn’t feel like the daunting task I expected it to be.

And in October when we did a three-mile hike to Chimney Rock at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, I recited the poem in my head as I climbed.

Your Turn

Did you memorize the selection from “Ulysses” this month? Join our By Heart community and share your audio or video using the hashtags #ByHeart and #MemoriesWithFriends and tagging us @tspoetry. We also welcome photos of your handwritten copy of the month’s poem.

By Heart for November

For the next By Heart gathering, November 30, we’ll memorize Sara Teasdale’s Peace, which I discovered at Every Day Poems in September. This one ebbs and flows like the sea.

Peace

Peace flows into me
As the tide to the pool by the shore;
It is mine forevermore,
It will not ebb like the sea.

I am the pool of blue
That worships the vivid sky;
My hopes were heaven-high,
They are all fulfilled in you.

I am the pool of gold
When sunset burns and dies,
You are my deepening skies;
Give me your stars to hold.

— Sara Teasdale

Photo by Dennis Skley, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome, author of The Joy of Poetry.

Browse more By Heart

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“Megan Willome’s The Joy of Poetry is not a long book, but it took me longer to read than I expected, because I kept stopping to savor poems and passages, to make note of books mentioned, and to compare Willome’s journey into poetry to my own. The book is many things. An unpretentious, funny, and poignant memoir. A defense of poetry, a response to literature that has touched her life, and a manual on how to write poetry. It’s also the story of a daughter who loses her mother to cancer. The author links these things into a narrative much like that of a novel. I loved this book. As soon as I finished, I began reading it again.”

—David Lee Garrison, author of Playing Bach in the D. C. Metro

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Megan Willome
Megan Willome
Megan Willome is a writer, editor, and author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems and Rainbow Crow: poems in and out of form. Her day is incomplete without poetry, tea, and a walk in the dark.
Megan Willome
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Filed Under: Blog, By Heart, Finding Inspiration

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About Megan Willome

Megan Willome is a writer, editor, and author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems and Rainbow Crow: poems in and out of form. Her day is incomplete without poetry, tea, and a walk in the dark.

Comments

  1. L.L. Barkat says

    October 25, 2018 at 11:46 am

    Megan, thank you so much for leading the way on this. I loved memorizing “Ulysses” and found myself entertaining me in a long line at a store the other day, by going through the poem in my mind. There is something wonderful about beginning to build a little poetry book in my head, that I can mentally pull out whenever I need or want it. 🙂

    Here are my “Ulysses” pieces. I’m really looking forward to hearing and seeing others’.

    https://soundcloud.com/l-l-barkat/ulysses-excerpt-for-tweetspeaks-by-heart-community-mp3

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/110769643@N07/44079121025/in/dateposted-public/

    Also, I really enjoyed your unfolding of “Ulysses” for us here. I agree about poor Penelope. The part about Tennyson was very touching. Poetry for the heart’s sorrows. Poetry… for life.

    Reply
    • Sandra Heska King says

      October 25, 2018 at 2:27 pm

      “A poetry book in my head.” I love it. And it takes up much less space when you travel.

      I’ve read in my head on walks, in the shower, and in the middle of a sleepless night.

      Reply
      • Megan Willome says

        October 25, 2018 at 2:57 pm

        I’d love to hear more about that, Sandy, about the places where the poems you’ve memorized come to visit.

        I’ve currently got three in my head (I also memorized Yeats’ “The Lake Isle of Innisfree), starting a fourth next week.

        Reply
        • Sandra Heska King says

          October 25, 2018 at 3:30 pm

          They also come in handy on an airplane and in long car rides and sitting in a doctor’s office. 🙂 I’m also less likely to doze off than when I’m reading.

          Love Innisfree!

          Reply
  2. Megan Willome says

    October 25, 2018 at 1:44 pm

    I love hearing your voice and seeing your handwriting. Thanks for making space online for us to play.

    Reply
  3. Sandra Heska King says

    October 25, 2018 at 3:00 pm

    Yay, Megan! I felt sadness in this poem, too. But also inspiration in my season–which is why I started a few lines earlier…

    “Old age hath yet his honor and his toil… ”
    “T is not to late…”
    “Some work of noble note may yet be done”
    “My purpose holds to sail beyond…”
    “strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

    Here’s my trimmed video recitation:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5YZlCHbug8

    My handwritten copy is on the Flickr site.

    Reply
    • Megan Willome says

      October 25, 2018 at 7:56 pm

      Sandy, I love that you heard this a little differently, based on your season.

      Isn’t that the great thing about poems? That they speak differently to us at different times.

      Reply
  4. Bethany R. says

    October 29, 2018 at 9:26 am

    Interesting to hear the context of when in Tennyson’s life this was written. Yes, maybe he was spurring himself on.

    The rhythm and drive of stepping and climbing would pair well with reciting this poem. 🙂

    Reply
    • Megan Willome says

      October 29, 2018 at 9:52 am

      It’s interesting, Bethany, because the poems I tend to like best and save are neither rhyming nor rhythmic. But when it comes to memorizing, it helps to have some sort of framework.

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Tweetspeak Poetry: By Heart: “Ulysses” says:
    February 11, 2019 at 9:09 am

    […] By Heart: “Ulysses” wrapup + New Teasdale “Peace” Challenge […]

    Reply
  2. Reader, Come Home: "The Odyssey" | says:
    June 7, 2019 at 5:00 am

    […] brings me back to my first By Heart poetry memorization, of the end of “Ulysses” by Tennyson. In that poem Ulysses/Odysseus says, “that which we are, […]

    Reply
  3. Reading Generously: Happy Endings | Tweetspeak Poetry says:
    July 2, 2021 at 6:03 am

    […] to Shelly’s blood-chilling masterpiece, so I am already returning spend more time with Turner’s Odysseus-like hero. In an interview with Vox, she said, “I much prefer that we just have our horrible […]

    Reply
  4. Tweetspeak Poetry: By Heart: “Ulysses” by Tennyson — Megan Willome says:
    October 13, 2022 at 3:24 pm

    […] By Heart: “Ulysses” wrapup + New Teasdale “Peace” Challenge […]

    Reply
  5. The Hero’s Poetry Journey: The Call to Adventure — Megan Willome says:
    January 20, 2023 at 8:08 am

    […] These fifteen lines are the first poetry I ever memorized, so they represent my own call to adventure. But I did not want to memorize poetry (my boss asked me to write a column about it anyway). And I did not especially like this particular poem. […]

    Reply

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