The Poetry of Memory

As members of my family get older and as I scoot past middle age (assuming I live to be 100 like Granny), I’ve started focusing on habits that will improve my health and work parts of my brain to keep dementia, or as Granny used to call it the “old-timers,” at bay.

Of the same mindset, my husband works a crossword puzzle almost daily.  I love crossword puzzles, and I like to sneak attack and fill in a few answers when he’s left one unattended. I’ve also recently picked up Sudoku as an app on my phone, and I’m about halfway through the intermediate level. I’m not sure what to do when I get to the “hard” level.  Does it help to try to do something when you are older that you probably weren’t capable of doing when you were younger?

But recently in my book group, someone mentioned a new strategy that he had picked up. He was starting to memorize poems.  And not just short, but impactful poems like William Carlos Williams’ poem, The Red Wheelbarrow. I remember studying that poem and realizing how much imagery could be packed into a few words.

My friend had started with a small challenge, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas.  This reminded me of Granny, who in the last few years had trouble remembering pieces of the day – but she could quote poetry that she learned in fourth grade. “Come little leaves said the wind one day,” she would quote. Her voice would slow into a melodic, graceful meditation.  And I thought that’s something that I want to be able to do.  I want my children and grandchildren and the staff at whatever nursing home they may stick me into, I want them to pause and listen. And Dylan Thomas would be a great one to not just quote, but shout into the hallway, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”  Maybe that will just make me the crazy old lady in room 8 that everyone avoids, but that’s okay by me. At least, I will be seen.

My friend had also started memorizing some of the epic poetry, like Seamus Heaney’s translation of the Aeneid. And I liked the idea of that as well. If I scared everyone away with my Dylan Thomas, I could draw comfort in the stories that I could tell and retell myself in the quiet of my room.

Or maybe, like Granny, I would just pull from what I could remember from fourth grade, from the day I stood at the front of the class to recite Robert Frost’s Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood. Maybe today is when I’m at that crossroad, and I will take the “road less traveled by” and capture some of the greats to take with me, in my memory, to comfort me in a time when I may no longer remember “me.”