Thanks so much Pat for letting us know all went well - wow this afternoon - it must be so much nicer to recoup at home - love your observations - just adds a sparkle -
Frybabe I just got lost in the link that included the list by century of all the prose poems - it was my childhood - never realized but different than even my children's education we either read or had read to us or memorized many prose poems and I loved them - had to renew and even found on line, where for very little cost, two of the poems are available in old books from 1905 and 1911 - that too- I love those old cloth bound books.
Included in the link to Epic Poetry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_poetry in the 'see also' is 'Epic Fiction' and under it is 'List of Epic Poems" and there is so much of my childhood. I can see our 7th grade nun reading aloud to us Longfellow's
Evangeline - We read and memorized so many Longfellow long poems - 6th Grade it was
The Courtship of Miles Standish - and I can see him now as my father, when he was feeling happy and he would burst into quoting the entire
Paul Revere's Ride and another
The Wreck of the Hesperus that he almost acted out with gusto - it was not till years later I realized how sad was the story but then my father would have learned these poems in his early years of primary school, 3rd or 4th grade.
My mom knew large sections of the
Song of Hiawatha - and just the opposite, days when she was weary or on wash days she would quote the poem.
And of course in 8th grade we all had to memorize
Aurora Leigh and we read for a book report
Song of Myself.
On hot summer days under the cool shade of the front porch where no adult could squeeze reading from our 6th and 7th grade summer reading list,
Joan of Arc and the wonderful
Song of Roland and Tennyson's
Idylls of the King.
When I was very young, before I understood what the poem was all about and we were till speaking German my Grandmother in her soft way would seem to disappear into herself and quote in German from
Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen/Germany: A Winter's Tale - When I saw the author I was shocked - had no idea this was a poem by Heinrich Heine.
Und als uch die deutsche sprache vernahm
Da ward mir seltsam zumute
And then in High School, I think Senior year, we read
Tristram of Lyonesse - oh the romance of it... Although not an epic poem Freshman year we read
Ivanhoe followed the next year was
Hamlet, Junior year was,
Macbeth and sprinkled in usually in the Spring of the year, there was
John Brown's Body, Crane's
The Bridge and Sandburg's
The People, Yes and of course being a Catholic High School we read
The Ballad of the White Horse by G.K. Chesterton along with the wonderful
The Lady of ShalottSo that frybabe with that last link, showing those performing the
Manas, the video also brought back memories of that sing song way the Sister Rose Imelda would stop us everytime to hear the lines and concentrate on the whole line, not just rhyming line endings, and to think of it as if we were giving a speech with emphasis rather than singsonging. I remember being so disappointed and not wanting to express my disappointment with my children's education not reading or being exposed to this bounty of literature - they did not read these epics in school any longer much less memorize lines - I often think it was the beginning of the dumbing down - to my way of thinking the modern literature they did read was stuck in the latest social issue rather than seeing these issues in a historical context by reading some of these epic poems.
I took so long writing this as again, I had to quote and look up to remind myself of sections - how much fun this has been. And to think folks are still doing this as public entertainment. Hmm I wonder - is it because they do not watch TV and are still living among their extended families - but then he did share earlier how one couple was probably going to move away to a city - I wonder, is it the break up of family that makes a change in continuing traditions.
