Joshua Foer: Moonwalking with Einstein

I finished this delightful, fun book. As I believe I mentioned in an earlier blog post, the book was condensed into a NYT Magazine article a couple of weeks ago, and I couldn't resist the book. If you've read much about memory before, I don't know that you'd learn much new. But if you agree with St. Augustine that sedi anima est in memoria ("the seat of the mind is in the memory"), then you realize that remembering is no small thing. Of course, different events or sources of information have different degrees of inherent memorability and value, so we can pick and choose to some degree. But what we are as persons is in some sense simply the sum of our history, our memory. Some of this history is genetic, some personal, what happened to me from infancy until now. Well, this books goes more to issues of remembering information, but even in this age of instant computers, having knowledge in one's head has value that we can't off-load onto computer disc. The review that I've linked to provides a fair assessment of the book, so you can determine if you'd like it.

Memorizing Poetry

I've been getting back into memorizing poetry after earlier bouts, and the linked article is a nice encouragement, plus reading Moonwalking with Einstein. I have some chunks of poetry and verse that I carry around in my head from earlier forays into this area. I think more and more it is valuable, as an older form of reading such as the lectio divina, we "chew" and contemplate the words, something that you have to do in the process of memorizing.

I also like this article because I howled in protest at the demand that we memorize the funeral oration in Julius Caesar for 10th grade English class. One classmate (who will remain unnamed, but I've kept in touch with her over the years) positively reveled in the assignment. I think I resisted because I thought it too much work. Well, another folly of my youth!

So far:
1. The opening stanza of Eliot's Four Quartets ("Time present and time past. . ..")
2. The closing stanza ("We shall not cease from exploration . . . and the fire and the rose are one")
3. Prospero's speech in the Tempest (Be cheerful sir, . . . and our little life is rounded with a sleep")
4. Macbeth's speech (already had this one)("Out, out, brief candle. . . ")

In tap: George Herbert, Gerald Manley Hopkins, more Shakespeare (of course)(some Henry V portions I know pretty well), and John Donne (the love poems, although I'll never match the voice that Richard Burton gives them).

Suggestions?