TLL - Poetry Unbound Podcast Project

Thomas Leon-Lewis talks about how he started taking cold showers and keeping a journal to improve his mental health. He reads a poem called "Forgetfulness" by Billy Collins, which resonates with him because it reflects his own experiences with memory loss. The poem emphasizes the inevitability of forgetting and the need to cherish memories. Thomas also reflects on his own struggles with remembering things and how the poem reminds him of his earliest memories. He concludes by emphasizing that we must accept the loss of memory and appreciate the time we have with our memories. Hello, this is Thomas Leon-Lewis, and roughly one year ago, I'd say, probably a bit more, I started taking cold showers and keeping a journal for myself, a diary, if you will. Initially, these were just to try and improve my mental health, because at the time, it was not so great. But over time, I realized the importance of both to not only maintaining my mental health in the moment of stress and anxiety, but having that um, closure that I'll be able to reflect on my past more easily with a clean body and a clean mind. And so today, I wanted to read Billy Collins' Forgetfulness, because I find it to be very close to my own thoughts of memory and being. The name of the author is the first to go, followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel, which suddenly becomes one you've never read, never even heard of. As if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor, decide to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village, where there are no phones. Long ago, you kiss the names of the nine muses goodbye, and watch the quadratic equation pack its bag. And even now, as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away. A state flower, perhaps, the address of an uncle, or the capital of Paraguay. Whatever it is you are currently struggling to remember, is not poised on the tip of your tongue, or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen. It is floated away down a dark mythological river, whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall. Well on your own way to oblivion, will you join those who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bike? No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart. When I first read this poem, it was a sort of sadness and realization that came over me, knowing how truthful it was to my own life and own experiences with memory and the loss of it. I also realized from this poem how we just need to accept that this is going to happen, and that, at least to me, we need to cherish these memories we have and the time we have with them, because as they are personified into a human in this poem, we lose the ability to human in this poem. We lose humans and people die just like these memories. This poem also uses you and your a lot, which I think is Billy Collins' subtle way of influencing the reader even farther by making them think that this is already something in you, you just don't know it yet. This is not someone who's experiencing these things, it is you, and you will not escape it. And in fact, I have personally experienced many occasions where I just can't seem to recall something, you know, it's on the tip of my tongue, it's almost there, but as said by the poem, it is not just there, it is not even in some far corner of my spleen, it is floated along whatever that river from the underworld in Greek mythology is called or something else, like the Rubicon, and is long gone. However, one memory I can recall that this poem brought forth was some of my earliest memories, such as when I had just started to walk and was running around the playground with my mother, waiting for my sister to finish her ballet practice, or when I was playing with my friend in a little pillow fort we had made, or playing roblox and whatever games they were at the time, not a care in the world to be had. And so that again comes back to the sadness and realization this poem brings of how there is no stopping this, we must accept it. Forgetfulness by Billy Collins. The name of the author is the first to go, followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel, which suddenly becomes one you've never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decide to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones. Long ago, you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye and watched the quadratic equation pack its bags, and even now, as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away. A state flower, perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay. Whatever it is you are struggling to remember, it is not poised on the tip of your tongue, or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen. It is floated away down a dark mythological river whose name begins with an L, as far as you can recall, well on your own way to oblivion, where you will join those who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bike. No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart. This has been Thomas Leon Lubowitz, and thank you for listening.