For the last several weeks, I have read a lot of poetry. I bought “The Best American Poetry 2024”; I burned through Danez Smith’s newest book, “Bluff”; I’ve returned to Li Young Lee’s, “The Undressing”. My poetry reading increased because I started reading it in a different way. Instead of focusing on getting something out of the poem, I focused on rhythm. Even if a poem was free verse, I applied some sort of meter to it. It didn’t necessarily have to be iambic, but I did read it with a sine-wave like pattern in my internal voice.

This technique made reading poetry more fun. I cared less that a poem was cryptic. But because reading did not result, necessarily, in understanding, I found I remembered little of what I read. While reading, the words triggered the imagination. Proper nouns and individual phrases caught my attention: Basquiat and Madonna, Saint Frances and Libya. Joshua Bennet’s line in his poem, “First Philosophy”, shone clearly: “What is your all-time favorite/phenomenon? Mine is when/the error is as lovely as the aim”. Reading poetry for rhythm often only results in engagement with the poem at the level of the symbol. The mind lights up with images and sensations, which may trigger associated memories or feelings.

I contrast this to my general the experience of reading fiction. Recently, I have used symbolic sensitivity to engage with a text. I let the nouns of a prose text warm up my imagination. The goal and result of doing so is different than poetry: in fictional prose, I search for ways of engaging with the narrative. There are few more enjoyable things than when a story hooks you. The mechanism of linguistic symbolic technology is fuel for the narrative. When a narrative takes hold, I remember it. The story roots itself in a part of my mind that is easily accessible.

Because reading poetry and fiction are remembered so differently, I suspect that the effect of reading poetry may be largely unconscious. If asked, I can’t readily talk to you about a poem I read, but it must be affecting some part of my mind. It must be, or else I wouldn’t enjoy it, and I wouldn’t continue reading so much verse.

This may also be a problem of volume. Poetry is often very short. I’ll read 10 poems in a day. I’m usually reading 1 or 2 works of fiction at a time, and I return to the same narrative days straight for weeks It makes sense fiction would be easier to remember.

Still, I am unsettled by the memory part. It makes me feel, at times, feeble minded. Conversation is one partial solution, if a solution is really required. Literature is enhanced when spoken about. Conversation reinforces textual events. Ideas take on new meaning when another person’s perspective is brought into account. Too bad no one reads poetry.

Another thought: appreciating poetry correlates with a shift in mindset. Big narrative arcs align to the big life events that are universally valued or fear. To name a few: riches, professional success, marriage, grief, abuse, and bankruptcy. I have been trying to put more value on smaller, ephemeral things. There may be a way to build relationships on those things which are just as strong as those built around the big stories.