Forgetfulness

Beginning with a self-effacing wink, Collins’s “Forgetfulness” immediately draws the reader in as he writes, “the name of the author is the first to go” (Line 1), suggesting that as a writer, he himself could be among the first forgotten in his reader’s mind. From there, the title and the plot follow “obediently” (Line 2), suggesting an inevitability to the forgetting; it happens easily, with the full cooperation of the objects of forgetfulness. The catalog of forgotten items builds to a crescendo, encompassing next “the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel / which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of” (Lines 3-4). These lines establish that this poem will use a second person direct address, consistently referring to the “you” figure, or the reader, effectively enmeshing the reader with the poem. Rather than crafting a speaker who himself has forgotten, Collins heightens the emotion and the tension, suggesting that an entire community has undergone or will undergo this experience, and the reader is merely one of them.

The second stanza uses an extended, anthropomorphized metaphor to convey the experience of forgetting: “as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor / decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, / to a little fishing village where there are no phones” (Lines 5-7).