Today, we went over a new poem: Billy Collins’s “Forgetfulness.”

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

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.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

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.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Collins is famous for poems in which a witty, whimsical tone belies a deeper, subtler idea. He’s perfect for teaching kids what I call the two levels of poetry: what’s happening in the poem and what the poem is about. His work also often shows a clear tonal shift, and that’s something I want my students to be able to sense.

Yet eighth-grade students often miss the whimsy in his poems. They read something like this without cracking a smile. They even watch an animated version of it without reaction:

So we have to walk through it carefully.

This year, I started by focusing on the fifth stanza:

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.

“Everyone has heard the phrase ‘it’s on the tip of your tongue,’ right?” I asked. Of course they had. But I had to lead them into “lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.” We mapped it out:

• “poised” turns into “lurking”
• “tip” transmutes into “some obscure corner”
• “tongue” becomes “spleen”

“Have you ever heard anyone say some memory is ‘lurking in the corner of my spleen’?” I asked. And everyone laughed. “That’s what the poet was getting at!”

Once they got it, they saw the other instances of whimsy in the poem:

• We talked about the idea of “the memories you used to harbor” deciding to “retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, / to a little fishing village where there are no phones.” “Look at all that absurd detail!”
• We visualized kissing “the names of the nine muses goodbye” — “I’m going to miss you so much! What will life be like without you!?”
• We imagined seeing “the quadratic equation pack its bag.” “It’s over, do you hear!? I saw you last week in the park with that pythagorean theorem!”
• We saw the drama build up with the line “It has floated away down a dark mythological river” only to fizzle out pathetically with “whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall.”