Poetry memorization.. i guess i started with poems from books i was reading anyway,
One ring to rule them all,
T'was brillig, and such. Then freshman year in
high school, our evil
english teacher made us memorize poems and recite them in front of the class. I still know most of
Rudyard Kipling's
If, of
Ozymandias, of
In Flanders' Fields. When we made mistakes, he would hold up one finger for each mistake, and the whole class would titter and make faces - torture for a
shy,
panic-stricken performer.
Then, four years later, I was at a school in England and had "evening school" - when i was required to be in my room working. Of course, what i was really working on was practicing juggling, and also memorizing poems - Plath's Fever 103º, Lady Lazarus (out of the ash/I rise with my red hair/ and I eat men like air); John Berryman - Life, friends, is boring...; Archibald MacLeish's Ars Poetica; tidbits of Shakespeare. Others and more.
Some of these I still remember. When i was free to walk about alone on the downs there, I would repeat them, hearing a voice as an instrument, and the words thrilled me.