A pleasant surprise to see this thread going again. Thanks, John, for the information about the incompleteness of Clancy's recitation of Yeats. Alas! My mind is so satisfied with that aural memory that I hate to think of the performance as flawed, but I guess in terms of the poet's intention it is.
Charlotte, thanks for the corroboration, and also for the counterexamples, the students who loved recitation.
I have to say that after coming back to poetry as a grown-up I've made fewer, rather than more, attempts to memorize other people's poems, though some poems or lines stick whether I will or no. The only one of my own that I have absolutely cold is one that I've recorded on a CD and that plays in our little player beside the bed as the wake-up alarm every blessed morning. The rolling dac-hex is a definite help.
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