Ever since I was pretty small, maybe about five or six years old, my parents encouraged me to learn poetry by heart. So, little by little, I began learning Lithuanian and English poetry. I started off with children poems, then, later, I began to learn long, patriotic, historical poems… After a time, I added Russian poetry into the mix.

I have many favorite poets, but my most favorite is Jonas Strielkūnas, a Lithuanian classic. Here I’ve included all of his poems that I already have memorized. Although I learn mostly Lithuanian poetry, I also learn quite a bit of English poems as well. Among the poets that I learn in English are William Blake, Edgar Allan Poe (my greatest goal is to commit his “The Raven” to memory), Lord Byron, and also J.R.R. Tolkien. Although I consider myself to be absolutely fluent in English, for some reason, English poetry doesn’t reach me the same way that Lithuanian poetry does. Somehow, in English, the words don’t flow as smoothly, the words aren’t as significant…

Below you can see a list of many different poets in three languages — Lithuanian, English, Russian. By clicking on each link you will enter separate pages that have poems by each of these poets. Why did I specifically include these particular poets and poems? Because I know each and every one of these poems by heart! Yes, ALL of them. Not a month passes by without me learning poems in all three languages that I know. I often choose myself the poems that I would like to learn, because it is much more delightful to recite a poem that I really like. So, over the course of many years, as you can see, I have by now a pretty big repertoire...