As Marie Howe Said best, “Memory is a poet, not a historian.” Poetry about memory and nostalgia comes in many forms, from longing lyrics on past lovers, to odes on familiar places, to dirges honoring those who came before us.
Memory is one of the trickiest things about being human, as we can only sometimes control what we remember and what we forget. As such, it has long been a favorite topic and theme of poetry, as each line attempts to glean some insight into what it means to remember something and what it means to lose one’s memories.
The following poems offer a unique perspective on memory as they look back at the past from various perspectives, recalling sensations, events, people, places, and things that the speaker feels connected to, creating a web of time that lasts far beyond the poet.
‘I wish I could remember that first day’ by Christina Rossetti is also known as ‘First Day.’ It focuses on the speaker’s regret that she can’t remember more about her first love.
I wish I could remember that first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me,
If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or winter for aught I can say;
‘In drear-nighted December’ by John Keats describes the way memories of happier and warmer times impact one’s emotions in the coldest hours of December.
In drear nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity—
Wordsworth’s ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’ tells of the power and influence of nature in guiding life and morality.
Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.—Once again
Jean Bleakney’s ‘Consolidation’ is a deeply personal poem about the act of rearranging the cowry shells that the speaker and her children gathered in the past.
Some sunny, empty afternoon
I’ll pool our decade’s worth
and more of cowrie shells
gathered from that gravel patch
‘Memorial’ by Amanda Gorman is a poem about the past and how poets are able to use their writing to help readers relive it.
When we tell a story.
We are living
Memory.
‘In Memory of the Utah Stars’ captures the manner in which memories can provide us with both pleasure and pain.
Each of them must have terrified
his parents by being so big, obsessive
and exact so young, already gone
and leaving, like a big tipper,
‘Yellow Stars and Ice’ captures the unattainable nature of memory, even when it feels tantalizingly close at hand.
I am as far as the deepest sky between clouds
and you are as far as the deepest root and wound,
and I am as far as a train at evening,
as far as a whistle you can't hear or remember.
‘What My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why’ is an Italian sonnet about being unable to recall what made one happy in the past.
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
‘In Memory of My Mother’ reflects on cherished memories, celebrating an everlasting bond between mother and son.
I do not think of you lying in the wet clay
Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see
You walking down a lane among the poplars
On your way to the station, or happily
William Wordsworth’s literary classic, ‘Daffodils,’ also known as ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,’ is one of the most popular poems in the English language. It is a quintessential poem of the Romantic movement.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
‘Another Insane Devotion’ by Gerald Stern is about a man reflecting on his life experiences. His memories, while not always easily understood, help him see the value of the choices he has made.
This was gruesome—fighting over a ham sandwich
with one of the tiny cats of Rome, he leaped
on my arm and half hung on to the food and half
hung on to my shirt and coat.
‘Knows how to forget!’ by Emily Dickinson describes forgetting and how hard it can be to put something out of one’s mind that’s emotionally scarring.
Knows how to forget!
But could It teach it?
Easiest of Arts, they say
When one learn how
‘But Not Forgotten’ by Dorothy Parker speaks to the impact of one person’s memory on their past romantic partner.
I think, no matter where you stray,
That I shall go with you a way.
Though you may wander sweeter lands,
You will not soon forget my hands,
‘The Forest’ by Susan Stewart is a complex, cyclical poem about how memories can give new life to things that no longer exist.
You should lie down now and remember the forest,
for it is disappearing--
no, the truth is it is gone now
and so what details you can bring back
might have a kind of life.
‘They Desire a Better Country’ by Christina Rossetti is an incredibly complex and beautiful poem by the Victorian poet. It’s not one of her better-known, but it does utilize many of the themes and emotions she’s known for.
I would not if I could undo my past,
Tho' for its sake my future is a blank;
My past, for which I have myself to thank,
For all its faults and follies first and last.
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