Thoughts upon reading an essay on Porous Memory and the Cognitive Life

Thoughts upon reading an essay on Porous Memory and the Cognitive Life April 18, 2009

Gray739-emphasizing-hippocampus
Henry Vandyke Carter [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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.

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