Compulsive Memory and Poetic Composition

Memory as the Lifeblood of Poetry

Photo by Patti Black on Unsplash

There are moments in this life that spark awakenings of a certain divine simplicity when we are almost forced to suppose that the universe, for some unfathomable reason, was beholden to us alone in sharing such revelations. A few days ago, I experienced such a moment as I was running some errands in a strip mall near my home. As I neared the corner where a dry cleaners and nail salon conjoined to coerce me into a right turn, a gust of wind made a sort of mini-cyclone of brown leaves appear in that corner, immediately triggering a memory in me of the very first time I noticed the same thing happening—a memory that I’d already used in one of my sonnets to describe a group of skipper butterflies taking to the air after I’d startled them with my presence. This memory, for whatever reason, has been a recurring one throughout my life, and in the instant that those leaves swirled before me, the words “compulsive memory” came to mind, along with the remembrance of my poem and why I had written it.

From a poetic standpoint, what made complete sense to me at the time was that such memories of clarity, whether as single images or a succession of them, trigger a compulsion to write in the poet. The poet is brought to the page with an eagerness to express whatever emotion is linked to a specific event in his or her life, and when the moment of composition begins, the juxtaposition of feeling and words will serve as a kind of absolutism in reflection. In the sonnet I referenced above, it was the startling of butterflies that took me back to the swirling leaf imagery of a chilly autumn day, the immediateness of the present harkening back to the past which compelled me to write. But such compulsions can be actuated by any number of experiences, such as a kiss from one’s lover, the touching of a hand, the smell of coffee meandering up the stairs in the morning, the scent of a woman’s perfume on a first date, the sound of tires screeching, a wren’s song at first light or a robin’s at dusk. A stepping out into the rain might trigger a remembrance of stepping back in from it, of looking out onto a stormy street from the 2nd floor of a restaurant, of a fishing trip with one’s brother on the opening day of trout season when the weather didn’t oblige.

It was also apparent to me, and I have had this thought before, that the poet’s mind is in constant rewind mode during poetic composition. Even when pondering what the future might bring or, as a hypothetical, what it will look like as technology advances, the poet must sift through the vast grab bag of images and experiences that his or her memory has stockpiled through the years to describe what is being imagined. The poet becomes a spectator while the act of writing takes place, observing life events like they are happening again in real-time, while the mind shifts its focus to adjust to whatever emotion is dominating the poem’s sentiment. This is an inverted concentration, by which I mean that the whirlwind of images that memory reshuffles as each line is composed will take the poet from place to place, from event to event, from scene to scene, in a distracted manner, so that he or she is always internalizing those images and benefiting from their symbolic lineage.

In sitting down to write a poem about a loved one’s passing, for example, the poet’s mind might drift back to a first remembrance of death, how the smell of fresh flowers filled a funeral home, the kind words that were spoken by an aunt or an uncle, a sister’s sobbing, the eulogy a cousin gave, and so on. This first memory of death may also be commingling with the memory of a family pet as the poem is composed, its backyard burial, an inability to understand the weight of such an event as a child, being so close to a beloved animal that gave its love unconditionally. The commingling occurs because the emotion of losing someone close is recognizable to the poet’s psyche as it relates to the heartache of saying goodbye and the finality of such an experience.

In another instance, the poet’s mind might not be thinking about death at all when writing about a deceased loved one, instead wandering to a favorite memory of childhood, at the top of some hill under the cool shade of a maple tree perhaps, where friends played nearby in the spring sun and a parent was unpacking lunch. The warm connotations of such a memory, in contrast with the sadness of losing someone close, becomes a tool for expression, an emotional avatar that speaks to the true affinity the poet has for a person who is no longer here. At the same time, this wandering may take the poet through a labyrinth of more recent events, to where the echoes of a father’s last words still resonate, a quiet prayer is being said at his bedside, a conversation with a funeral director is being had.

The compulsion to write can be brought on by almost any memory, but it can also be brought on by things, situations, and places that are familiar to the poet. An against-the-clock scramble-journey to the post office, with the hopes of mailing out a letter before it closes, might spark dozens of poems of a humorous nature or conjure up some philosophical musing on the brevity of life and how quickly the years pass. A trip across the pond to where one’s Irish grandparents lived could inspire twenty or so poems about love’s transparency and the importance of family, about upbringing, about culture in connection with one’s roots. The discovery of an old basketball in a garage, its pebbles worn to a smooth shininess, might bring the poet to write some verses on wasted youth, or even a poem about love if a romantic relationship’s first seeds were sown at a basketball game. The numerous stressors that the workweek brings are enough to set the poet writing about things that may have happened only hours ago, a manager’s disrespectful tone or a vending machine’s unwillingness to set a snack free from its steel-hooped clutches at the end of a long day.

As it applies to poetic composition, compulsive memory is often the lifeblood of a poem’s genesis. I am reminded of Keats’ famous remarks about poetry, in a letter he wrote to his editor John Taylor, where he says, “If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all.” This has always held true for me as a writer of poetry, as the truth of a poet’s observations are often fully realized in the raw spontaneity of a work’s opening lines.

Sláinte

Like a sweep of dry, brown leaves the wind picks up

And throws into the sky, stirs all at once,

These startled skippers scatter with me here,

Tickle the breeze in bunches; recommence

With tippling from the dewy bumper crop

(Of tiny flowers) that they commandeer

Each autumn, when a chill is in the air.

Meticulously navigating crowns

Of purple petals with their stilt-like legs,

You’d think that they were stepping over eggs,

So light their footfall. Each one slowly downs

The sparkling vintage of another year,

Intoxicating, sweet: such moments meant to savor,

A toast to their existence and to Nature.

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James Feichthaler is a poet with roots in the Philadelphia-area residing in Trenton, NJ, where he watches the skies for UFOs, sings Irish folk songs on his porch, and drinks beers. Author of two books, The Rise of the COVFEFE and From the Back Porch of a War (Parnilis Media 2020 & 2024), he was the host of a poetry reading series called The Dead Bards of Philadelphia for over ten years and holds a W.B. Yeats event every June at Tir Na Nog pub in Trenton to celebrate the poet's life and works. You can find him on Instagram @james_feichthaler and on X @forrealist_poet.