Forgetfulness

Billy Collin's poem "Forgetfulness" indirectly fits our theme of memorization. The poem tells the story of losing one's memory. The first stanza reads: "The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel, which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never heard of." When you read the poem in full, you can't miss the humor, but also the theme of loss underlying it -- and the point that someday the details of name and place and dates will wilt and fall to the ground, like the memories of my grandmother who can no longer find the salt in her cupboard. Billy Collins poem reminds me of the law, the unpleasant underbelly of memorization. That despite our best efforts, our memories will someday fail.

But, seeing all things through my Lutheran-colored glasses, there is also gospel in learning things by heart. It's the gospel element of memory that I often overlook in my frenzy to learn and teach my children the books of the Bible, the Presidents of the United States, the geography of the entire world. While facts and dates are worthwhile, it's the beautiful words and ideas from poetry, great thinkers, history, literature that will shape our children, giving them greatness to ponder, and mostly it's the words from the Scripture and the poetry of our hymnody that shape their beliefs and strengthen their trust in God. My Pastor often reminds me that a person's theology very often stems from the hymns and spiritual songs they have memorized.

I want my daughters to have a treasury of good words that they can draw on so that they are well educated and so that they have lots of opportunities in life, so that they can be writers or artists or teachers if they'd like, so that they love to learn and appreciate beauty, so that they have rich vocabularies and strong minds, but especially so that they are like my 90-year old grandmother who forgets the simplest detail, but still chimes in to sing hymns with her church family and to say the prayers she memorized as a child.

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go

followed obediently by the title, the plot,

the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel

which suddenly becomes one you have never read,

never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor

decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,

to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye

and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,

and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,

the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,

it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,

not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river

whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,

well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those

who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night

to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.

No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted

out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Billy Collins