WEBVTT

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We were talking at
dinner about the fact

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that it took three of us to
remember one person's name.

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Each one supplying a
few syllables at a time.

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I got the middle initial
right or something.

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So, this is a poem that
addresses that problem.

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It's called "Forgetfulness."

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And it begins by talking about
a kind of what someone called

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a sort of literary
amnesia where you

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forget the things you've read.

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John Updike recently
confessed that he

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was reading one of these early
Melville novels like Typee

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or Omoo or one of those.

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And he got halfway
through it and he noticed

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a bit of marginalia of his own.

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He didn't know whether-- so he
realized he'd read it before.

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But then he didn't
know whether he

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should turn back or continue.

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So the poem is called
"Forgetfulness."

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"The name of the author
is the first to go.

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Followed obediently by
the title, the plot,

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the heartbreaking conclusion.

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The entire novel which suddenly
becomes one you have never

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read, never even heard of.

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[LAUGHTER]

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It is as if one by
one, the memories

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you used to harbor
decided to retire

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to the southern hemisphere of
the brain to a little fishing

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village where there
are no phones.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Long ago, you kissed the names
of the nine muses goodbye,

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and you watched the quadratic
equation pack its bag.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And even now as you memorize
the order of the planets,

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something else is slipping away.

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A state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle,

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the capital of Paraguay.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Whatever it is you are
struggling to remember,

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it is not poised on
the tip of your tongue.

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Not even lurking in some
obscure corner of your spleen.

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It has floated away down
a dark mythological river

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whose name begins with an
L, as far as you can recall.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Well on your own way
to oblivion where

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you will join those who have
forgotten even how to swim

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and how to ride a bicycle.

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No wonder you rise in
the middle of the night

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to look up the date of a
famous battle in a book on war.

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No wonder the moon in
the window seems to have

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drifted out of a love poem that
you used to know by heart."

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