Diary 322

Thursday, February 4th

Today my old chum Dave and me started something we will, I hope, continue for many moons. We started a poetry discussion via zoom. The idea is we choose a poem, or two, and – wait for it – learn it by heart. That’s right. We make it ‘ours’ through memory.  Then, when we meet we discuss what came up in the process. We will keep this to just two of us for now.

Why do we do this? When poetry and decent prose is committed to memory an interesting alchemy takes place, and we begin to feel the value of the words differently. New aspects of the phrasing show themselves. This is perhaps why people become emotional when singing their National Anthems, to give an obvious example.  Those words come to mean far more than they did the very first time they were heard.

We started today with a Derek Mahon poem, ‘Everything is going to be all right” and allowed it to unfold, like a flower, as we looked at it. And it revealed wondrous depths we hadn’t expected. A very satisfying activity, to be sure.