Memory Book

Posted bywordsandcoffee1Posted inPoetry, W3 PromptsTags:, , , , 
kept quiet, curiously,
captured keepsakes penned 
in calendars, caught treasures
hum calming melody,
cautiously curating memories,
amid muffled 
composition: our 
concordant calming chorus

The Wea’ve Written Weekly prompt this week is from David himself over at the Skeptic’s Kaddish. He asks poets to do the following:

  • Write a poem of at least six lines that’s heavy on consonance, assonance, or both;
    • Consonance: repetition of identical consonant sounds;
    • Assonance: repetition of similar vowel sounds.

It’s one of those weeks where I’m still playing catch-up on my to-do list into the weekend, but I still wanted to hop into the prompt! 🙂 It’s fun to play with word sounds, and I definitely take liberties with consonance and assonance when writing poetry, preferring some of the near-identical sounds to the identical ones. I especially like the words that look like they shouldn’t share a similar sound yet they do (perhaps only a language as silly as English would lead to words like “kept”, “quiet”, and “curiously” all starting with similar sounds).

Besides the sounds themselves, I found myself thinking of memories with this poem. How do we determine which moments make it into our long-term memory bank? Why, for instance, do I still have embarrassing memories from middle school but can’t remember where in the house I left my phone this morning? (I’m sure I’ll find it somewhere odd…) Some memories are cemented in place while others seem more fluid, a bit like a lucid dream.

32 thoughts on “Memory Book”

  3. When it comes to memory, it never ceases to surprise me. Like you, I still have very clear memories from a very long time ago, but then, find myself standing in the supermarket, trying to remember what I said I was going to cook for dinner. Ah, well, life remains a mystery… I like your assonance/consonance poem, Sarah.

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  9. hum calming melody,

    I love this line in particular, Sarah, but your poem is lovely from start to finish.

    I think I read/heard somewhere that we don’t actually remember the memories themselves… what we remember is ourselves remembering those memories the last time we remembered them…

    ❤
    David

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  11. Loved the mix of sounds and alliteration in your piece Sarah, as for memory it’s a strange one, maybe we remember things that have real importance to us, although I sometimes wonder what the significance was/is of some of my clear memories 😄

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  13. I think we tend to remember novelty and our emotion spikes more than the mundane, ‘more important’ things in life. And I find the emotion thing to be true. I tend to remember more when there are big shifts, versus things I ACTIVELY try to remember, like words of a new language, lol. Which is why I love journalling too. Helps separate the days instead of turning them all into one big muck.

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    1. That is a nice advantage of journaling, especially if you’re looking back on something. I am glad that I journaled throughout 2020; I was keeping track of cancer treatment, but then it turned into a crazy year for everybody, and I had it captured in action.

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