This is the entrance to the
forgotten works: be careful;
you might get lost
-Richard Brautigan
I forget to remember to forget the trivialities: girls
Slick as zip guns: their kid gloves which, once,
Embraced long bone -white deco Espana cigarette
Holders: but today, I embrace their memories: as it
Turns out, they were a major % of what few friends
Were put with me, here, on this pilotless plane, as
Though we were with Mr. Arkadin (portrayed by
Orson Welles, in 1955) and cruising under the
Slaughtered sky
But, I remember to forget the contrived geographies
In boring schoolbooks and fail to trust the deadly
Deals of avarice and enterprise: all the grief of sly
Grievances that appear more and more to be nothing
More than simple remains of ruminations concerning
Those friends, so conspicuously gone, now, on some
Vaporous high desert airport tarmac: all those brave
Enough to be recollected, but who will continue to be
Buried, then will dwell under the slaughtered ground
From: Crosswalk Casserole
Summary
“AMNESIA IN MEMORY MANOR” by Michael C. Ford is a poem centered on place and geography, memory, love and relationships. The poem develops its subject through recurring images and shifts in emotional pressure rather than reducing the experience to a single statement.
Analysis
Voice
A personal, first-person speaker combines recollection with direct emotional address.
Style and form
The poem is line-driven, first-person. The poem moves by accumulation: images, references, and tonal turns build on one another, so meaning emerges from their relationships as much as from narrative sequence.
Themes and imagery
Its strongest thematic currents include place and geography, memory, love and relationships, mortality and loss. Concrete images give those abstractions physical weight, while changes in diction and pace keep the poem from settling into a single emotional register.
Reading the poem
A productive way to read “AMNESIA IN MEMORY MANOR” is to watch how its images change function as the poem progresses. Details that initially establish scene or memory become emotional evidence. The result is a poem whose argument is carried through association, rhythm, and image as much as through explicit statement.
Explore this poem
Source & rights
Source: Crosswalk Casserole (Lawn Gnome Publishing, First Edition, 2013)
Rights: © 2013 Lawn Gnome Publishing. All rights reserved.