Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0375: Memorize Dylan Thomas’s “Lament”

Episode Date: August 15, 2015

Angus asks about memorizing “Lament” by Dylan Thomas. I present the tools and techniques needed to commit this poem to memory. BONUS: Here’s a quizzing set you can use to memorize the key words of this poem: Memorize “Lament” What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed […]

Master of Memory 375 Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Angus asked about memorizing Dylan Thomas' poem, Lament. This poem has five stanzas of twelve lines each, so I would call it a medium-sized poem, so it won't be as quick and as easy to memorize as some of the other poems that we've covered on this show, but I'll give you a rough outline of how you can break it down and do this. First, you want to find some audio of the text so that you can listen to it every day,

and that'll enhance your study and kind of hold everything together. But then you want to reduce each line to a keyword. Then looking at the stanzas in two parts each, so that you're only worried about six lines at a time, memorize these keywords using a 10-station memory palace. So in your first station, you'll put the words windy, spit, ramrod, tiptoed, Telltale, and Blush. If I was to do that in the room that I'm in right now,

I would probably start on the one end of the room, and I would have some wind blowing in this window that I'm looking at, and then on the shelf next to it, the second station, I would perhaps have the... There's a picture of a dog above this shelf, and I would have him drooling onto the shelf. So we have windy, spit for the drool, and then there's a sort of heater on the ground next to the shelf,

and so on that heater, I would have a ramrod. I would push a rod into the heater. I would imagine that. And then for tiptoed, someone could be tiptoeing across the cold air conditioner on the window next to that. And so their toes are freezing to the air conditioner. And so that's tiptoed. And then telltale, since the next thing in this room is the bathroom, I might just imagine that the toilet is talking to me and trying to tell me a story. And then the next thing is blush, and since the next thing in this room

is a mirror, I would just imagine looking in the mirror and blushing because there's something red all over my cheeks. So it's pretty easy for me now to remember all of these words. Starting with the window, I have windy, and then spit, and then Ramrod, and then Tiptoe, and then Telltale, and then Blush. So you're going to do that with 10 rooms, something like that, imagery that these single words from each line represent. But then also at the same time, make sure to listen to the poem a lot and try to recite along with it, thinking about your imagery and your keywords so that you can remember what's coming up. And then at the same time, while you're quizzing, you want to make sure to try to think of the entire text, not just the keywords that you're quizzing on, because you want to tie the entire lines to these keywords. The keywords are the triggers,

and then the entire line is the result. So thanks for the question, Angus, and just go to masterofmemory.com slash thomaslament, all one word, thomaslament, and you'll find the quiz that we've put out there so that you can quiz on these keywords without having to create your own quiz. I like providing the resources so that you can learn this stuff and actually put it into action, and then I'd love to hear back from you once you have this poem memorized, which I imagine might be very soon. For anyone listening, if there's a poem that you want to memorize or anything else that you want to learn faster than ever, go to masterofmemory.com slash question and let me know what it is. What do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can

be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll talk to you again soon.