I did want to thank all of it other
speakers besides me tonight it’s great
to come out here and see invisible
realities of so many different
perspectives I got a little nervous when
I was preparing my own talk and so I
thought I’d asked the greatest order of
all time for a little advice and this is
what Cicero had to say good public
speakers he says needed five things and
you can see him up there on the screen
but the thing is you’re gonna have to be
the judge of how I arrange my ideas and
the style in which I give those ideas
discover an idea some years ago it was a
I write an aviary travelogue classics
scholar and writer and he was talking
about the oral State of Mind we don’t
know too much about that state of mind
but it’s possible that it has great
intuitive and emotional depths that we
can’t appreciate anymore and it has a
the way I see it it’s our memories that
are most at danger these days most under
assault and that’s true publicly because
we don’t remember our history and
I teach English here in Mesa College and
I think that English and the humanities
are really one of the things that can
counteract this assault on memory I wish
more people were English majors but to
explain why I think that I have to talk
a little bit about poetry and where it
comes from and in my experience where it
comes from is mostly invisible but it’s
one of the more powerful and visible
realities I’m aware of I’m talking about
the muses so who at this point I also
want to formally invoke the muses and
ask them for help in my presentation the
way Hesse on of the sixth century BC
asked for their help when he was writing
his poem called Theogony
he wrote they breathed the voice into me
and power to sing the story of things of
the future and things past
if the agony is the classic poem that
talks most about the muses and in it
Hesiod reports that the muses told him
always to put themselves at the
beginning and end of my singing and so
poets started to invoke the muses at the
beginning of all of the epic poems all
the epic poems in the language that we
because the poet knew that he couldn’t
do it all by himself he needed help
we still need their help so who were
they the muses they came from good stock
as people used to say
Zeus made love to the Mosinee the
goddess of memory very ancient goddess
she was a Titan born before Zeus and he
went up to her sacred bed far away from
the other immortals
according to the poem and they made love
for nine nights and then she bore her
nine daughters concordant of heart and
singing is all the thought that is in
them and no care troubles their spirits
we say that the muses sing and dance
because those were the activities that
the Greeks took most pleasure in and so
they became natural metaphors for what
the muses did when we’re under their
influence we discover things we didn’t
know and we remember things we’ve
forgotten so the public started asking
the muses for for help at the beginning
of their epic poems and it became a
tradition it’s been a long time since
people have gotten the news from poems
but for about a thousand years poetry
was the only game in town and I mean it
when the poets came through town
everybody flocked to hear them it wasn’t
just like any old concert because they
were getting educated they listened to
the music and the lyrics and they
understood what it meant to be a Greek
or an anglo-saxon warrior with Beowulf
and this oral tradition continued even
into the 20th century in certain parts
of the Balkans and rural Yugoslavia
where poets memorized Scerbo creation
heroic songs these poets had to memorize
vast amounts of material but they always
performed them spontaneously so no one
the reason that the audience was paying
so much attention was not only because
of the music or the lyrics but because
of the power those singers were
channeling because they had memorized
their poems the audience knew that the
poets had
been keeping company with the muses and
so they had some Authority we call it
today being inspired but and the time
I’m talking about it was a lot more
concrete as a woman named Catherine
Robson who wrote a book about memorizing
poems called heartbeats wrote if we do
not learn by heart the heart does not
feel the rhythms of poetry as episode
Aryans of its own insistent beef so
here’s a poem that I have by heart
it’s one of Shakespeare’s sonnets when
my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her though I know she lies
that she might think me some untutored
youth unlearned in the world’s false
subtleties thus vainly thinking that she
thinks me young although she knows my
days are past the best simply I credit
her fall speaking tongue on both sides
this is simple truth suppress but
wherefore says she not she is unjust and
wherefore say no know that I am old
Oh loves best habit is in seeming trust
an agent love loves not to have years
total
therefore I lie with her and she with me
and in our faults by lies we flattered
when I cover this poem in my two classes
my students seem to think that this is a
relationship that’s going nowhere I’m
not so sure I think this might be as
or it’s the muses sent to Asiata
we know how to say many false things
that seem like true sayings but we know
also how to speak the truth when we wish
to I think one of the reasons that
poetry lost its exalted status over the
years was because of written 10 some
people still read poems not many
maybe their English professors or
English majors or they’ve taken a
literature class or two but most of us
not so much and that’s too bad
because exactly to that extent we don’t
realize that we’re speaking poetry all
the time even in simple conversations we
have become estranged from that with
which we are most familiar and in this
case it’s our human voices we don’t even
use our phones to talk to each other
anymore
we prefer edited versions of ourselves
when I was first coming into poetry in
college there were things called found
poems little bits of language that
seemed all by themselves to be poems
they could have been advertising jingles
or headlines even bits of conversation
all you had to do was notice them they
could even take the form of a little
note stuck on the refrigerator door as
in this poem by William Carlos Williams
this is just to say I have eaten the
plums that were in the icebox and which
you were probably saving for breakfast
forgive me they were delicious so sweet
do you think he was really sorry but um
one of the things I want to talk to you
about tonight is that all poetry is in
some ways found poetry if you remember
back to what Cicero said about public
writing the first thing he talked about
was invention the discovery of ideas and
similarly a 20th century poet Denis
libertà wrote writing poetry is a
process of discovery revealing inherent
music the music of correspondences that
is that music is always there but
sometimes we don’t hear it or as a
teacher of mine once said the great poet
and writer Edward Dorn a poet’s
occupation is to compose poetry the
writing of it is everywhere n is
remembering that other meaning of
composition not so much writing poetry
as composing poetry that’s already exist
that’s constantly being written on the
air but we don’t always hear that poetry
we don’t always see that poetry because
we’re not paying enough attention we’re
looking to much of our screens the
written word as it became supreme
narcotics eyes memory that’s from a
classic scholar of the 1930s and it’s
not likely where weren’t weren’t warned
and one of Plato’s dialogues the
Phaedrus he questioned written language
which was at that time still quite new
and he said it will implant
forgetfulness in their souls they will
cease to exercise memory because they
rely on that which is written calling
things to remembrance no longer from
within themselves but by means of
external marks unfortunately Plato
didn’t think that for too long a few
years later
the Republic and he kicked the poets out
of his ideal society all this rabble
rousing appeal to emotion and memory
through song it wouldn’t do it wasn’t
rational enough so there’s been a pretty
mentioned Erik Heather luck at the
beginning of my talk he’s the guy who
talked about an aural state of mind and
this is from his book the muse learns to
write and he’s still talking about that
oral poetry when a society relies on a
system of communication which is wholly
oral it will like are still have to rely
on a tradition what kind of language can
supply this need and still remain oral
the answer would seem to lie in
ritualized utterance a traditional
language which somehow becomes formally
repeatable like a ritual in which the
words remain in a fixed order such
language has to be memorized there is no
other way of guaranteeing its survival I
think it’s a pretty good definition of
poetry a traditional language which
somehow becomes formally repeatable so
here I want to give you another poem and
another poem about love relationships
and poetry although this time I have to
think that the poet is talking to
himself it’s by Dylan Thomas and it goes
like this in my craft or sullen art
exercised in the still night when only
the moon rages and the lovers lie Abed
with all their griefs in their arms I
labor by singing life not for ambition
or bread for the strut and trade of
charms on the ivory stages but for the
common wages of their most secret heart
not for the proud man apart from the
raging moon do I write on these
spindrift pages nor for the tower in
dead with their nightingale
and songs but for the lovers their arms
wrapped around the griefs of the ages
who pay no praise or wages nor hear nor
heed my craft or arts are in that second
part cut kind of narky my craft or art
I’ve learned that a long time ago in
UCLA in an English literature service
class much like the class that I teach
here at Mesa and I something about that
paradox really got me from the beginning
that we have to continue on with our
poetry even if we think that nobody is
reading it or listening to us because
it’s us because it’s part of our heart
because that’s what we know and it’s who
we are this is pretty good poetry too
it’s from a 20th century editor in
England and he was upset that people
were memorizing poems and he said can
you not give them in their short years
at school something to sustain their
souls in the long valley of humiliation
that’s pretty good poetry so is this for
men torn again culture is based on what
men remember not what they do
fortunately even a civilized man who can
read and write will occasionally exhibit
this memory at which times in ascent of
a man he acted with loveliness I want to
confess a more personal motive about why
I’m talking to you about this subject
tonight Nicholas Carr is one of our most
foremost technology skeptics and a
couple of years ago he wrote a book
called the glass age and he told a story
about the Inuit tribe in northern Canada
and he started out by describing their
environment the average temperature
hovers around 20 degrees below zero
thick sheets of sea ice cover the
surrounding waters the Sun is absent
landmarks are few snow formations are in
constant flux and trails disappear
overnight so because it was winter
pretty much 365
days a year the anyway tribe had to
develop these skills called wayfinding
they had to know where they were going
when they couldn’t see and they
developed a knowledge based on winds and
snow drift patterns and animal behavior
and stars and waves and currents this
was an inherited knowledge and skill
that was continuously taught for over
thousands of years until about the year
2000 when the global positioning system
came into operation and when GPS became
popular these trustworthy Inoue guides
started to have accidents they started
trusting in the satellite too much they
lost touch with their environment they
lost touch with their land and this
wayfinding skill that was continuously
developed over thousands of years might
disappear in one generation I’m not here
today to tell you to give up your cell
phones that’s not this talk but I am
here to tell you why this story meant so
much to me my father had Alzheimer’s
disease and I remember it after reading
this story
his first symptoms he got lost he didn’t
know how to drive home from work anymore
he wandered the freeways of Los Angeles
for hours until he came home we all knew
that something was wrong and if you have
Alzheimer’s in the family you all know
that it never got any better and now my
older sister is showing symptoms of
early Alzheimer’s so this freaked me out
as you might imagine so I got one of
those genetic tests and there’s good
news I don’t carry the gene that’s
associated with the disease that’s not
to say I won’t get it but it is to say
that I value memory and poetry and the
poetry that’s based on memory all the
more I memorize poem is something they
can never take away from you you’ll
always have it and a memorized poem can
give solace like this early poem from
William Butler Yeats I will arise and go
now and go to
three and a small cabin build there of
clay and wattles made nine bean rows
will I have there a hive for the
honeybee and live alone in the be loud
Glade and I will have some peace there
because peace comes dropping slow
dropping from the vales of the morning
to where the cricket sings they are
midnight salah glimmer and noon a purple
glow
an evening full of the minutes wings I
will arise and go now for all the ways
night and day I hear the low sound of
Lake water lapping by the shore while on
the road waves are on the pavements gray
I hear it in the deep hearts core I hope
the muses keep calling for us if they do
it won’t sound quite like our language
so we have to be ready for them we have
to realize where we are and we have to
keep talking to each other and listening
to what we have to say and we have to
keep remembering so let’s keep doing
that and let’s keep trying to make the invisible visible
speakers besides me tonight it’s great
to come out here and see invisible
realities of so many different
perspectives I got a little nervous when
I was preparing my own talk and so I
thought I’d asked the greatest order of
all time for a little advice and this is
what Cicero had to say good public
speakers he says needed five things and
you can see him up there on the screen
but the thing is you’re gonna have to be
the judge of how I arrange my ideas and
the style in which I give those ideas
discover an idea some years ago it was a
I write an aviary travelogue classics
scholar and writer and he was talking
about the oral State of Mind we don’t
know too much about that state of mind
but it’s possible that it has great
intuitive and emotional depths that we
can’t appreciate anymore and it has a
the way I see it it’s our memories that
are most at danger these days most under
assault and that’s true publicly because
we don’t remember our history and
I teach English here in Mesa College and
I think that English and the humanities
are really one of the things that can
counteract this assault on memory I wish
more people were English majors but to
explain why I think that I have to talk
a little bit about poetry and where it
comes from and in my experience where it
comes from is mostly invisible but it’s
one of the more powerful and visible
realities I’m aware of I’m talking about
the muses so who at this point I also
want to formally invoke the muses and
ask them for help in my presentation the
way Hesse on of the sixth century BC
asked for their help when he was writing
his poem called Theogony
he wrote they breathed the voice into me
and power to sing the story of things of
the future and things past
if the agony is the classic poem that
talks most about the muses and in it
Hesiod reports that the muses told him
always to put themselves at the
beginning and end of my singing and so
poets started to invoke the muses at the
beginning of all of the epic poems all
the epic poems in the language that we
because the poet knew that he couldn’t
do it all by himself he needed help
we still need their help so who were
they the muses they came from good stock
as people used to say
Zeus made love to the Mosinee the
goddess of memory very ancient goddess
she was a Titan born before Zeus and he
went up to her sacred bed far away from
the other immortals
according to the poem and they made love
for nine nights and then she bore her
nine daughters concordant of heart and
singing is all the thought that is in
them and no care troubles their spirits
we say that the muses sing and dance
because those were the activities that
the Greeks took most pleasure in and so
they became natural metaphors for what
the muses did when we’re under their
influence we discover things we didn’t
know and we remember things we’ve
forgotten so the public started asking
the muses for for help at the beginning
of their epic poems and it became a
tradition it’s been a long time since
people have gotten the news from poems
but for about a thousand years poetry
was the only game in town and I mean it
when the poets came through town
everybody flocked to hear them it wasn’t
just like any old concert because they
were getting educated they listened to
the music and the lyrics and they
understood what it meant to be a Greek
or an anglo-saxon warrior with Beowulf
and this oral tradition continued even
into the 20th century in certain parts
of the Balkans and rural Yugoslavia
where poets memorized Scerbo creation
heroic songs these poets had to memorize
vast amounts of material but they always
performed them spontaneously so no one
the reason that the audience was paying
so much attention was not only because
of the music or the lyrics but because
of the power those singers were
channeling because they had memorized
their poems the audience knew that the
poets had
been keeping company with the muses and
so they had some Authority we call it
today being inspired but and the time
I’m talking about it was a lot more
concrete as a woman named Catherine
Robson who wrote a book about memorizing
poems called heartbeats wrote if we do
not learn by heart the heart does not
feel the rhythms of poetry as episode
Aryans of its own insistent beef so
here’s a poem that I have by heart
it’s one of Shakespeare’s sonnets when
my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her though I know she lies
that she might think me some untutored
youth unlearned in the world’s false
subtleties thus vainly thinking that she
thinks me young although she knows my
days are past the best simply I credit
her fall speaking tongue on both sides
this is simple truth suppress but
wherefore says she not she is unjust and
wherefore say no know that I am old
Oh loves best habit is in seeming trust
an agent love loves not to have years
total
therefore I lie with her and she with me
and in our faults by lies we flattered
when I cover this poem in my two classes
my students seem to think that this is a
relationship that’s going nowhere I’m
not so sure I think this might be as
or it’s the muses sent to Asiata
we know how to say many false things
that seem like true sayings but we know
also how to speak the truth when we wish
to I think one of the reasons that
poetry lost its exalted status over the
years was because of written 10 some
people still read poems not many
maybe their English professors or
English majors or they’ve taken a
literature class or two but most of us
not so much and that’s too bad
because exactly to that extent we don’t
realize that we’re speaking poetry all
the time even in simple conversations we
have become estranged from that with
which we are most familiar and in this
case it’s our human voices we don’t even
use our phones to talk to each other
anymore
we prefer edited versions of ourselves
when I was first coming into poetry in
college there were things called found
poems little bits of language that
seemed all by themselves to be poems
they could have been advertising jingles
or headlines even bits of conversation
all you had to do was notice them they
could even take the form of a little
note stuck on the refrigerator door as
in this poem by William Carlos Williams
this is just to say I have eaten the
plums that were in the icebox and which
you were probably saving for breakfast
forgive me they were delicious so sweet
do you think he was really sorry but um
one of the things I want to talk to you
about tonight is that all poetry is in
some ways found poetry if you remember
back to what Cicero said about public
writing the first thing he talked about
was invention the discovery of ideas and
similarly a 20th century poet Denis
libertà wrote writing poetry is a
process of discovery revealing inherent
music the music of correspondences that
is that music is always there but
sometimes we don’t hear it or as a
teacher of mine once said the great poet
and writer Edward Dorn a poet’s
occupation is to compose poetry the
writing of it is everywhere n is
remembering that other meaning of
composition not so much writing poetry
as composing poetry that’s already exist
that’s constantly being written on the
air but we don’t always hear that poetry
we don’t always see that poetry because
we’re not paying enough attention we’re
looking to much of our screens the
written word as it became supreme
narcotics eyes memory that’s from a
classic scholar of the 1930s and it’s
not likely where weren’t weren’t warned
and one of Plato’s dialogues the
Phaedrus he questioned written language
which was at that time still quite new
and he said it will implant
forgetfulness in their souls they will
cease to exercise memory because they
rely on that which is written calling
things to remembrance no longer from
within themselves but by means of
external marks unfortunately Plato
didn’t think that for too long a few
years later
the Republic and he kicked the poets out
of his ideal society all this rabble
rousing appeal to emotion and memory
through song it wouldn’t do it wasn’t
rational enough so there’s been a pretty
mentioned Erik Heather luck at the
beginning of my talk he’s the guy who
talked about an aural state of mind and
this is from his book the muse learns to
write and he’s still talking about that
oral poetry when a society relies on a
system of communication which is wholly
oral it will like are still have to rely
on a tradition what kind of language can
supply this need and still remain oral
the answer would seem to lie in
ritualized utterance a traditional
language which somehow becomes formally
repeatable like a ritual in which the
words remain in a fixed order such
language has to be memorized there is no
other way of guaranteeing its survival I
think it’s a pretty good definition of
poetry a traditional language which
somehow becomes formally repeatable so
here I want to give you another poem and
another poem about love relationships
and poetry although this time I have to
think that the poet is talking to
himself it’s by Dylan Thomas and it goes
like this in my craft or sullen art
exercised in the still night when only
the moon rages and the lovers lie Abed
with all their griefs in their arms I
labor by singing life not for ambition
or bread for the strut and trade of
charms on the ivory stages but for the
common wages of their most secret heart
not for the proud man apart from the
raging moon do I write on these
spindrift pages nor for the tower in
dead with their nightingale
and songs but for the lovers their arms
wrapped around the griefs of the ages
who pay no praise or wages nor hear nor
heed my craft or arts are in that second
part cut kind of narky my craft or art
I’ve learned that a long time ago in
UCLA in an English literature service
class much like the class that I teach
here at Mesa and I something about that
paradox really got me from the beginning
that we have to continue on with our
poetry even if we think that nobody is
reading it or listening to us because
it’s us because it’s part of our heart
because that’s what we know and it’s who
we are this is pretty good poetry too
it’s from a 20th century editor in
England and he was upset that people
were memorizing poems and he said can
you not give them in their short years
at school something to sustain their
souls in the long valley of humiliation
that’s pretty good poetry so is this for
men torn again culture is based on what
men remember not what they do
fortunately even a civilized man who can
read and write will occasionally exhibit
this memory at which times in ascent of
a man he acted with loveliness I want to
confess a more personal motive about why
I’m talking to you about this subject
tonight Nicholas Carr is one of our most
foremost technology skeptics and a
couple of years ago he wrote a book
called the glass age and he told a story
about the Inuit tribe in northern Canada
and he started out by describing their
environment the average temperature
hovers around 20 degrees below zero
thick sheets of sea ice cover the
surrounding waters the Sun is absent
landmarks are few snow formations are in
constant flux and trails disappear
overnight so because it was winter
pretty much 365
days a year the anyway tribe had to
develop these skills called wayfinding
they had to know where they were going
when they couldn’t see and they
developed a knowledge based on winds and
snow drift patterns and animal behavior
and stars and waves and currents this
was an inherited knowledge and skill
that was continuously taught for over
thousands of years until about the year
2000 when the global positioning system
came into operation and when GPS became
popular these trustworthy Inoue guides
started to have accidents they started
trusting in the satellite too much they
lost touch with their environment they
lost touch with their land and this
wayfinding skill that was continuously
developed over thousands of years might
disappear in one generation I’m not here
today to tell you to give up your cell
phones that’s not this talk but I am
here to tell you why this story meant so
much to me my father had Alzheimer’s
disease and I remember it after reading
this story
his first symptoms he got lost he didn’t
know how to drive home from work anymore
he wandered the freeways of Los Angeles
for hours until he came home we all knew
that something was wrong and if you have
Alzheimer’s in the family you all know
that it never got any better and now my
older sister is showing symptoms of
early Alzheimer’s so this freaked me out
as you might imagine so I got one of
those genetic tests and there’s good
news I don’t carry the gene that’s
associated with the disease that’s not
to say I won’t get it but it is to say
that I value memory and poetry and the
poetry that’s based on memory all the
more I memorize poem is something they
can never take away from you you’ll
always have it and a memorized poem can
give solace like this early poem from
William Butler Yeats I will arise and go
now and go to
three and a small cabin build there of
clay and wattles made nine bean rows
will I have there a hive for the
honeybee and live alone in the be loud
Glade and I will have some peace there
because peace comes dropping slow
dropping from the vales of the morning
to where the cricket sings they are
midnight salah glimmer and noon a purple
glow
an evening full of the minutes wings I
will arise and go now for all the ways
night and day I hear the low sound of
Lake water lapping by the shore while on
the road waves are on the pavements gray
I hear it in the deep hearts core I hope
the muses keep calling for us if they do
it won’t sound quite like our language
so we have to be ready for them we have
to realize where we are and we have to
keep talking to each other and listening
to what we have to say and we have to
keep remembering so let’s keep doing
that and let’s keep trying to make the invisible visible
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