Another forgotten writer and this one is unfathomable to me: W.S. Merwin. I spent quite a bit of time with him back in 1994, when he came to Columbia -- MD not U. of -- for a lecture. In the time I spent with him, I seemed to remember every line of poetry I had ever studied -- and even some I hadn't. I found myself quoting Villon -- where are the snows of yesteryear -- when I was usually more apt to think that was a lyric written by the "I Do, I Do" team.

Then this weekend, I read that Tony Kushner could recite many poems by memory. I can recite only two -- the beginning of "Paul Revere's Ride" and bits of some poem about Columbus, both forced on me in grade school. Here's what I can recall, with no Internet cheating.

Listen my children and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere/on the 18th of April in '75*/Hardly a man is now alive/Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend: if the British march tonight/Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch/One if by land, two if by sea/And I on the opposite shore will be/Ready to ride and spread the alarm/Through every Middlesex village and farm.

He said goodnight and with muffled oar -- and that's all I've got, folks.

(My father always maintained that it was rhyming ease of Revere's name that established his somewhat undeserved rep via Longfellow. After all, dad wrote, if Longfellow had honored the guy who finished the ride, it would have been: Listen my children and smack your jaws/At the midnight ride of William Dawes.)

As for the Columbus poem, I can still hear Ms. Burke's class droning: Behind him lay the gray Azores/Behind the ghost of Hercules/Before him not the ghost of shores/Before him only shoreless seas.

And I can see, and could even name if I were cruel, the poor lisping girl forced to recite: "The words lept like a leaping thword! Thail on, thail on, and on and on." Ms. Burke was not nice. Also, she wore slippers in class. And she put me in the stupid math group when it was clear that I knew how to do long division, I just couldn't see a damn thing, so I copied all the problems wrong.

I wish I could recite reams of poetry off the top of my head. Jean Kerr -- a favorite of mine in childhood, although I've not quite recovered from the unflattering portrait of her in Secrest's biography of Stephen Sondheim -- wrote about her family's culture hour, in which her sons were required to learn and recite poems. So, in my usual second-hand way, I learned this Robert Burns poem from Jean Kerr:

John Anderson, my jo, John,

 When we were first acquent;

Your locks were like the raven,

 Your bonie brow was brent;

But now your brow is beld, John,

  Your locks are like the snaw;

But blessings on your frosty pow,

  John Anderson, my jo.

 John Anderson, my jo, John,

  We clamb the hill thegither;

And mony a cantie day, John,

  We’ve had wi’ ane anither:

Now we maun totter down, John,

  And hand in hand we’ll go,

And sleep thegither at the foot,

  John Anderson, my jo.

(I double-checked this one, but only because I couldn't bear to mangle it. I had most of it right. Couldn't remember what was blessed or what kind of day they had "wi'ane anither." Otherwise, I pretty much had it down.)

So -- what do you know by heart? And, sure, theme songs count. (Let's go/to the drive-in down the street/Through the/courtesy of Fred's two feet.)

Honor system holds for this, of course.

*Hey, that's today!