The palest ink is better than the best memory. (Chinese proverb)
I had intended to preface this with a number of quotes about memory but now that I have found one that is so apposite, I shall forego all the others. The reason for this is that I have spent rather a lot of time this evening looking through old papers and poems to find one to add here in my occasional series reworking my early pieces. I didn't find any that I felt happy enough about to present but what I did find gave me some pause for thought. I found a collection of twenty five numbered ten-line poems that went by the overall title of tributes and attributes. Each of them was originally intended to be about one of my friends. The interesting thing is that when I wrote them I neglected to identify who they were about so that the poems themselves are all that I have to go on. Clearly I thought at the time that I would always be able to remember - and just as clearly I was wrong. Now, while I admit that this was over thirty years ago, I am surprised at how difficult the task of identification has been. Some of them I know; some of them I think I know; some of them I have not the faintest idea about.
The trouble is that they are, at best, cryptic and at worst, gibberish. They are exactly the kind of things that you might expect of a fifteen year old. (Which is a shame as they were written between 1975 and 1977 when I was between eighteen and twenty.) They take a general mish-mash of aspects of peoples characters and personal appearance and then jumble them up with my opinions of them. What they don't do is show any regard for scansion, metre, rhyme or any of the other important elements of decent poetry.
I considered putting one here for analysis but frankly the quality is far too low at the moment, although if I can knock any of them into shape I may do so later. The point of this isn't to show what a rotten poet I was, it's to make a comment on the frailty of memory. The quote at the head of this entry suggests that writing things down is more reliable than just leaving them stored away in your mind, and I suppose it is. After all I can identify most of the subjects. The thing is that the poems themselves are largely meaningless to me. The images and incidents mentioned are gone as surely as if they had never been. I have far from the best memory but in this case the palest ink has also let me down.
Now I shall go away and see if I can manage to write, or rather rewrite, a couple of them. Failing that I could always just pop them into the large black filing cabinet beneath my shredder.
I had intended to preface this with a number of quotes about memory but now that I have found one that is so apposite, I shall forego all the others. The reason for this is that I have spent rather a lot of time this evening looking through old papers and poems to find one to add here in my occasional series reworking my early pieces. I didn't find any that I felt happy enough about to present but what I did find gave me some pause for thought. I found a collection of twenty five numbered ten-line poems that went by the overall title of tributes and attributes. Each of them was originally intended to be about one of my friends. The interesting thing is that when I wrote them I neglected to identify who they were about so that the poems themselves are all that I have to go on. Clearly I thought at the time that I would always be able to remember - and just as clearly I was wrong. Now, while I admit that this was over thirty years ago, I am surprised at how difficult the task of identification has been. Some of them I know; some of them I think I know; some of them I have not the faintest idea about.
The trouble is that they are, at best, cryptic and at worst, gibberish. They are exactly the kind of things that you might expect of a fifteen year old. (Which is a shame as they were written between 1975 and 1977 when I was between eighteen and twenty.) They take a general mish-mash of aspects of peoples characters and personal appearance and then jumble them up with my opinions of them. What they don't do is show any regard for scansion, metre, rhyme or any of the other important elements of decent poetry.
I considered putting one here for analysis but frankly the quality is far too low at the moment, although if I can knock any of them into shape I may do so later. The point of this isn't to show what a rotten poet I was, it's to make a comment on the frailty of memory. The quote at the head of this entry suggests that writing things down is more reliable than just leaving them stored away in your mind, and I suppose it is. After all I can identify most of the subjects. The thing is that the poems themselves are largely meaningless to me. The images and incidents mentioned are gone as surely as if they had never been. I have far from the best memory but in this case the palest ink has also let me down.
Now I shall go away and see if I can manage to write, or rather rewrite, a couple of them. Failing that I could always just pop them into the large black filing cabinet beneath my shredder.
2 comments:
Needed to clear my head from the latest stultifying report so I thought I'd look at one of your old posts (that's the right word isn't it?) at random.
I think you should try and make a couple of these poems fit for critical consumption, so long as it isn't one about me. Then light the blue touch paper and retire immediately. I hear North Korea is pretty inaccessible these days so you should be safe from pursuers and I believe that you have already established diplomatic relations with them.
David
Nice to get comments on the old ones. And yes, I'm perfectly sure there will be one about you in there. Not sure if it would be anything you'd want to read. And anyway if I can't recognize them when I wrote them the chances of anyone they are about recognizing themselves is remote.
It's more the embarrassment at just how bad they are that prevents publication.
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