Forgetfulness

One factor of aging is that old memories tend to return; hence, as I mentioned in the wicker-cage post, you may be fortunate enough to remember parts of famous passages you once memorized.

Another factor of aging is that some memories tend to slip away, old and new alike, a process aptly described in Billy Collins's "Forgetfulness." The poem first came to my attention on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, March 22, 2011, on National Public Radio (http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/?date=2011%2F03%2F22).

Now, Billy Collins was born in 1941, in March, nearly eight months before Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941). So before the United States entered World War II. As his poem suggests, he had to memorize the names of the nine muses in school (or maybe he did not have to, but was a very eager student who took it upon himself to do so).

I was born at the end of World War II, exactly nine months and two weeks after V-J, Victory over Japan, Day (August 15, 1945). And since memorization had become unfashionable in education, a discipline much swayed by fashion, I did not have to memorize the names of the nine muses, although I had to have read their names over at least once and learned where to look them up.

So, I think, as I hear the poem on the radio or read it over for myself, who are they, these nine muses? What are their names and what creative endeavor is each associated with? There is something to be learned here, and, since it's classical, probably something with some interesting follow-ups. Wikipedia to the rescue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muse!

So we have Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Erato (love poetry), Euterpe (song and elegaic poetry), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (hymns), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy), Urania (astronomy). Soon enough, you will notice that I rarely pass up an opportunity to spoon up (or force feed) the classics.

And what of import did we learn here? Well, sadly, not much. But my faith in the knowledge of the classics remains unswerving, and, the next time I post, I will be sure to call upon my muse, Thalia.

The Wicker Cage

Suppose I am a prisoner of war being held by the Viet Cong. I have nothing to do. I have little to eat or drink. Worst of all, I have nothing to read. A little dramatic? Maybe. But as a word nerd I feel the need to plan for times like these.

When I was in grade school and high school, my teachers, who had had to memorize and perform set pieces like Chaucer's prologue, "whan that aprille with his shores soote," Shakespeare's Hamlet's speech "to be or not to be," or the last nine lines of Bryant's "Thanatopsis,"made an important change in American pedagogy, one of several changes which, to my mind, have not been for the better.

Students were no longer required to memorize famous passages.

Why? I don't know. Memorizing a famous passage is not easy and reciting it in front of people, at least for me, harder still. (Is it my turn yet? Oh, God, do I go now?) Maybe my teachers experienced this same kind of performance anxiety.

They also seemed to think that memorization was not a challenging mental activity. A parrot could do as much.

And they already had the shards of our civilization knocking around in their pockets and nobody was sure which ones were important and which ones were not and maybe it was time to let all that go.

But memorization is good practice, and of a different kind than other kinds of learning. (Give it a try, if you don't believe me.) As Sherlock says in "The Long Fuse" (Season 1, Episode 8, November 29, 2012, Elementary, CBS, Television) "The brain is a muscle, Watson, and needs to be exercised regularly, lest it turn flabby."

And the passages you learn by heart when you are young, will, if you are fortunate, stay with you. Or, as I have done with a scant few, can possibly be recovered if you study them again. Then you will have a little piece of beauty to take out and admire from time to time. For those times you find yourself suspended in a wicker cage in the middle of a jungle with nothing to read.