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comment by wailingmandrake
wailingmandrake  ·  3434 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Learning poetry by heart

I definitely see how it could be come become a parlor trick. If you're doing it because you want to impress others, or because you want to be able to say "I've memorized umpty nine million poems!" then it's pretty meaningless. However, I think that if you're doing it because you want to improve your thinking, or because you want to genuinely share poetry with others, then it can be more than just a parlor trick.