Forgetfulness

Beginning with a self-effacing wink, Collins’s “Forgetfulness” immediately draws the reader in as he writes, “the name of the author is the first to go” (Line 1), suggesting that as a writer, he himself could be among the first forgotten in his reader’s mind. From there, the title and the plot follow “obediently” (Line 2), suggesting an inevitability to the forgetting; it happens easily, with the full cooperation of the objects of forgetfulness. The catalog of forgotten items builds to a crescendo, encompassing next “the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel / which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of” (Lines 3-4). These lines establish that this poem will use a second person direct address, consistently referring to the “you” figure, or the reader, effectively enmeshing the reader with the poem. Rather than crafting a speaker who himself has forgotten, Collins heightens the emotion and the tension, suggesting that an entire community has undergone or will undergo this experience, and the reader is merely one of them.

The second stanza uses an extended, anthropomorphized metaphor to convey the experience of forgetting: “as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor / decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, / to a little fishing village where there are no phones” (Lines 5-7). The metaphor is precise and evocative; in line with the lighthearted tone, the image conveys a benevolent faultlessness: The memories cannot help that they no longer have communication with the “you.” Like the “you,” the memories themselves are perhaps tired and ready to retire. The image conveys a sense of inevitability and prefigures the later stanzas’ more cyclical themes of aging and death.

In the third stanza, Collins draws heavily on images further in the recess of the “you” figure’s brain, suggesting that “you” have been forgetting things for many years: “Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye / and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, / and even now as you memorize the order of the planets” (Lines 8-10). These lines play up a sense of nostalgia, evoking memories of school assignments, establishing the “you” figure’s distance from their youth. Collins also suggests a growing kind of desperation, as the “you,” in the wake of the realization that he has forgotten so much, tries to memorize the order of the planets once again.

This effort is futile, though. Even as the “you” tries to grasp at memories, “something else is slipping away / a state flower perhaps, / the address of an uncle, / the capital of Paraguay” (Lines 11-12). Forgetting is inevitable, and the forgetfulness catalog expands to include a wide set of disparate things, each representing a different aspect of human joy. The state flower suggests nature and a sense of home or place. The uncle’s address represents family relationships and community. The capital of Paraguay suggests travel and expanded horizons.

The poem suggests that the root of this forgetfulness is not physical or in any part of the body: “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” (Lines 13-15). The speaker plays with the idiom “tip of the tongue” (Line 14); it is as though the speaker anticipates that “you” will protest and say the memory is just “on the tip of your tongue” (Line 14)—but the memory is decidedly not there, nor in any other obscure bodily location. The “you” will not be able to drum it up.

An image describes why the memory is not available: “It has floated away down a dark mythological river / whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall” (Lines 16-17). This mythological river, just beyond the memory’s reach, is the Lethe, one of five rivers in the underworld of Greek mythology. The Greek lethe translates literally to forgetfulness—the poem’s title—but it also translates to oblivion, a word appearing in Line 18. Ancient Greeks often related this river to a goddess of the same name—the goddess of forgetfulness and oblivion. The poem’s invocation of the underworld alludes to the prospect of death.

The “you” figure is now “well on your way to oblivion where you will join those / who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle” (Lines 18-19). In the ultimate state of forgetfulness, these people can no longer recall even muscle memories and can no longer make their bodies function as directed. Because this forgetful community, “those / who have […] forgotten” (Lines 18-19) are at the end of the Lethe, the implication is that these are dead souls.

The tone shifts moving into the final stanza, becoming more empathetic and intimate: “No wonder you rise in the middle of the night / to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war” (Lines 20-21). The poem again utilizes a death-adjacent image, dancing around the “you” figure’s fear. Forgetfulness symbolizes aging and loss for the “you,” and they actively try to stave it off, going so far as to get out of bed in the middle of the night to do everything he can to remember a small detail. While the detail itself doesn’t really matter, the ability to remember it means a great deal to the “you.”

The final image maintains empathy for the “you” (whom one could read as the poet’s projection of himself) before shifting in a more sentimental direction: “No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted / out of a love poem that you used to know by heart” (Lines 22-23). A quiet acceptance pervades the final lines. Even as the “you” tries desperately to remember the date of the famous battle, another, perhaps more important thing slips away.