Thoughts upon reading an essay on Porous Memory and the Cognitive Life. Presented in villanelle form. Dedicated to the brilliant Jen.
- The hippocamp’s the home of memory
- Or so I’m told. I do not know the thing.
- It’s all poetry to me.
- Descartes opened up a skull to see
- the place where wet and wild notions ring:
- The hippocamp, the home of memory.
- His British peers liked their memory dry
- and rigid, separate in rooms and halls and wings –
- it’s all poetry to me.
- The brain’s a coil – or a library?
- A cabinet? A place for everything?
- The hippocamp’s the home of memory –
- – but what does hippocampus mean to me?
- My thoughts are fluttery insubstantial things.
- It’s all poetry to me.
- Still I read and hope to find the key,
- fantastical or plain, to opening
- hippocamp’ and home and memory.
- But all of it is poetry to me.