My friend Kate, who died about a year ago, was my go-to expert on English Literature. The question I wish I could now ask her is, "What's a good poetry anthology that's come out in the last year or two?" I miss those long meandering conversations which always came round to "What are you reading?" That's when I would have asked my question, knowing the answer would offer something intriguing and promising.
I've been looking for a couple of poetry anthologies that would both refresh the familiar and introduce me to poems and poets new to me. And I so wish Kate was around for one of those conversations. I recently bought two1 very different collections. In truth, they are more than collections. They are poems collected by the anthologist for very specific purposes, both of which are likely to make the reader think as well as enjoy.
This post is about Dancing By the Light of the Moon, a thick, readable and conversational collection of poems worth memorising. Clearly Giles Brandreth has a wide and generous repertoire in his own well informed mind. From Shakespeare to Lear, Betjeman to John Donne, Denise Levertov (now a life-member in my personal canon) to Carol Ann Duffy, from Heaney to Herbert, and Auden to Zephaniah; and the poems are arranged into chapters that cover haiku, limericks, sonnets, nonsense poems, Shakespeare soliloquies and various other categories, sensible, and intriguing, if at times refreshingly whimsical.
I'm half way through it, and it's like attending an audience with Giles Brandreth in full flow, with one liners, and personal stories that are funny, laced with name-dropping gossip, and at times poignant. More than that, he is an enthusiast, in love with his subject of poetry learned by heart. At times Brandreth's writing gives the impression of an overfilled wine glass spilling out verses and quotations and complete poems as he walks about the stage. It's a fun read which manages to say interesting and new things about the familiar, and prepares you to read and hear (yes read it out loud) poems for the first time. He is a consummate teacher who is not off-puttingly didactic; more like a conversationalist who shuts up regularly to let the poets get a word in edgeways.
It's nobody's business, but this book is on the bedside table. It's exactly what's needed to calm and re-settle the mind; not too much stimulus, but enough to keep you interested till lights out.
However all this brings me to one of the more intriguing reasons for his compiling this collection in the first place. Brandreth takes time to introduce the most recent research on the benefits of learning poetry by heart, which points to growing evidence that such cognitive activity helps keep dementia at bay. Professor Usha Goswami, leading researcher in cognitive developmental neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, puts the lie to the myth that as we grow older the brain replaces fewer and fewer cells. Learning new things, and specifically the practice of committing new knowledge to memory, and doing so in language that has rhythm and verbal cadences, strengthens the neural processes by which we learn and retain, remember and recall. That first chapter containing the evidence is worth the price of the book.
I can still recite, word perfect, several poems and Shakespeare passages learned 55 years ago. As a preacher throughout my life I know a lot of the biblical text by heart, and like most church-goers of my generation I can sing dozens of hymns without the aid of a hymn book.
But that's only half of the good Professor's point. That's the recalling part. What is of primary importance is to learn new poems by heart - or hymns - or Bible passages - or Shakespeare. But learn it, store it in the memory and compel the brain to work at retaining it by repetition, recitation and performance even if only to yourself. Brandreth is fully persuaded by the findings of this fascinating research, probing at the very edges of cognitive science in Cambridge. In response he has assembled more than 200 poems and passages, with introductory context and comment, and in categories chosen for the convenience of the reader intending to memorise. I'm going to try this and see how I get on. It will, I hope, supplement other lifelong intellectual and cognitive habits like textual exegesis, and reading books that provide brain circuit training as a mental workout!
Half way through it, and I'm glad I bought it. And I so wish that Kate was around to have a serious chinwag about the science, the poems, and the cognitive therapy that is scientifically established, of memorising her beloved Shakespeare - her Norton Critical Edition of which was laid on her coffin along with her flowers. She, amongst all the friends I've known, understood poetry, its place in our human experience, its capacity to teach, to heal, to comfort, to rebuke, to point us beyond ourselves. She knew in that way that the best readers know, the quality of poetry to equip the mind with words and images that sharpen our perceptions of the world, and deepen our understanding of each other, ourselves, and whatever transcends our all too human limits.
1. The second one I bought will be featured in another post once I get to it.
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