18 pages • 36 minutes read

Forgetfulness

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1990

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Use of Second Person

Collins uses a direct address to the second person to great effect. Choosing to speak to a “you” figure, Collins expands his audience and makes it intimate at the same time. The “you” figure has the power to encompass both the speaker himself, in a self-referential move, as well as all of Collins’s readers. The direct address makes the reader a part of the poem and creates a stronger sense of both sympathy and empathy for the figure who is forgetting and losing so much. Collins’s choice to directly address the reader forces them to consider the poem from a different, more personal angle, embodying each aspect of forgetfulness and thinking more deeply about the loss. The reader’s immersion in the narrative creates a deeper sense of investment. The second person address also introduces an element of vulnerability; the possibility of reading the poem as if the speaker is talking to himself allows the reader to sympathize with him further.

Catalog

“Forgetfulness” relies heavily on the use of a catalog, or a systematic list of items, to create tension and pacing. Beginning with the elements of a book (author, title, plot) and moving on to items learned in school (the muses, the quadratic equation, the planets) and beyond, Collins establishes that the list of forgotten items will create a baseline of values (creativity, intellect, learning); these values will serve to examine larger themes of death, aging, and loss.

The catalog conveys the overwhelming, inevitable nature of the forgetting. Collins writes, “even now as you memorize the order of the planets, / something else is slipping away” (Lines 10-11). The “you” tries to stem the flow of forgetting, desperately grasping for the lost things of their youth—but there is too much, and they will never be able to regain it all. In the process of attempting to remember, other things “slip away” (Line 11). The poem’s use of the catalog enacts the constant stream of forgotten things, creating an experience of deluge and emphasizing the need to accept the impossibility of remembering everything.

Tone

Collins employs his iconic playful tone throughout “Forgetfulness.” With lines like “kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye” (Line 8) and “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), Collins creates a sense of cheekiness, underscoring his serious themes of loss and aging with a current of humor. The double reality—comedy and tragedy—not only produces a light irony, but it helps to relieve some of the tension and alleviate the fear that the “you” figure and the reader might feel.

The poem’s casual, everyday language creates Collins’s trademark accessibility and heightens the sense of intimacy with his reader. Collins uses colloquial phrases, like “first to go” (Line 1) “No wonder” (Lines 20, 22), and “tip of your tongue” (Line 14), embedded in sometimes flat, simple sentences like “you will join those / who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle” (Lines 18-19). Doing so prepares the slight tonal shift at the end, lending the loss a special emphasis.