Poem of the Week: Mnemonic

Apparently you can selectively wipe out a single memory in rats. If you believe that our memories make us who we are, the implications are disturbing. I joke about wanting to block out portions of my life – usually chunks of grad school – but if we forget our mistakes, are we doomed to repeat them?

This poem by Li-Young Lee captures an even more elusive aspect of memory: how the habit of remembering, or trying to recapture a failing memory, becomes an act of self-definition. We are who we remember ourselves to be.

Mnemonic
Li-Young Lee, Rose

I was tired. So I lay down.
My lids grew heavy. So I slept.
Slender memory, stay with me.

I was cold once. So my father took off his blue sweater.
He wrapped me in it, and I never gave it back.
It is the sweater he wore to America,
this one, which I’ve grown into, whose sleeves are too long.
Flamboyant blue in daylight, poor blue by daylight,
it is black in the folds.

A serious man who devised complex systems of numbers and rhymes
to aid him in remembering, a man who forgot nothing, my father
would be ashamed of me.
Not because I’m forgetful,
but because there is no order
to my memory, a heap
of details, uncatalogued, illogical.
For instance:
God was lonely. So he made me.
My father loved me. so he spanked me.
It hurt him to do so. He did it daily.

The earth is flat. Those who fall off don’t return.
The earth is round. All things reveal themselves to men only gradually.

It won’t last. Memory is sweet.
Even when it’s painful, memory is sweet.

Once I was cold. So my father took off his blue sweater.

A collection of Li-Young Lee links