Memory Collage: Poetry
While working on the concept of memory and memory studies over the past few months, I made an important observation: Just like how people have memories that are unique, their understanding of the concept of memory is quite unique as well. Everyone conceptualizes the idea of memory in different ways. Personally, I liken the idea of memory to the newspaper collage projects that I used to work on in school. As we all know, a collage involves the pasting of newspaper cut-outs, one over the other, in a disorganized, haphazard manner. Primarily, it relies on one thing: overlapping.
Overlapping is integral to memories as well. In most cases, it is an elaborate overlap of numerous memories, pieced together as in a collage, that presents us with a complete recollection of an event, a person’s face, or even, the contents of a text.
In an attempt to reconstruct this neural process of overlapping and inter-connection, I designed an experiment. This experiment involves a set of carefully selected lines of poetry, each of which generate an image. Each generated image serves as the basis for the next line of poetry (for the purpose of better understanding, recollect how the popular game, ATLAS, works).
The Experiment
To begin with, let us consider the following line from Ezra Pound’s In a Station of the Metro: “Petals on a wet, black bough”. Apart from conjuring an image of the wet, black bough, the color ‘black’ also reminds me of the night, and the darkness associated with it.
This image of the night automatically helps me recollect the timeless, evergreen opening lines of Do Not Go Gentle Into the Good Night: “Do not go gentle into the good night, / Rage, rage, against the dying of the light”. Arguably, the phrase “dying of the light” has the potential to conjure different images, each a stark contrast from the other. For me, the phrase constructed the image of a flickering candle, at the verge of being extinguished.
The following lines from Stars in the Deepest Night After the Death of a Child, by Bordeau-Gentry, are, in my opinion the ideal manifestation of the above-mentioned image: “Candles flame in darkness, flicker, steadily glow,/ bringing light from shadows”.
Due to the curiosity and mystery that surrounds shadows, many poems have been written on the subject. One such work is Amos Russel Wells’ Shadow, in which appear these beautiful lines: “From shadow to shadow I pass, / under the sleeping trees”.
A particularly poignant image of still trees, with their leaves not rustling to the song of the wind, made me recollect the subsequent line: “My father learnt to fly in a dream”, from Fady Joudah’s poem, Sleeping Trees (Note: unlike the previous examples, here, the image of sleeping trees led me to a poem titled Sleeping Trees, not to a poem about sleeping trees).
Images, sensations and feelings abound at the mere mention of the word ‘dream’. In the field of poetry alone, there are many lines and images associated with a dream. Langston Hughes’ poem, titled Dreams is one of the notable associations: “Hold fast to dreams/ For when dreams go/ Life is a barren field/ Frozen with snow”. Upon reading, two images stand out: a barren field and snow. Both images lead to different pathways of recollections and associations. For this experiment, I chose the image of snow.
This choice of image is convenient, for it establishes an association with one of the most famous poems in English Literature: Robert Frost’s Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, widely renowned for its evergreen lines: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep”. Yet again, as was seen previously, we find the possibility of multiple images being generated from the above verse, each of which, in turn, will activate different pathways of connection, association and thought.
The Result
In this experiment, the processes of overlap, recollection, connection, association and fragmentation of thought, together, resulted in the formation of seven images: the Night, the flickering Candle, the Shadow, the Sleeping Trees, the Dreams, and, finally, Snow. These seven images, despite originating from independent lines of poetry, remain interconnected, due to the overlap in my thought process.
The Conclusion
- In both, Poetry and Memory, images are integral. It is through the formation of images that a better understanding is established.
- In order to fully experience a poem, we draw upon our experiences, and memories, of reading previous poems. Hence, it can be said that the act of reading a poem is simultaneously accompanied by a process of putting together a collage of previous poetic experiences, the basis of which is formed by our memories of the same.
- Poetry (and Literature, on the whole) and Memory share a symbiotic relationship- Literature helps preserve and propagate memories, while, memories, on the other hand, provide Literature with its content.
