“That’s one of the things that poetry — thanks to its technology of memory, its intuition technology — is engineered so well to do. When we commit a poem to memory and say it aloud, our breath quite literally embodies the poet’s words. In this instance, the poet’s name is Anonymous, that fabulous bard who also wrote so many great prayers and hymns and ballads and drinking songs. We will never know the identity of this poet, but in a certain sense we know the poet intimately, because the poem, and all the emotion and experience it contains, has been concentrated into something we can carry with us, inside us. And in so doing, we come to know ourselves more intimately as well, for the lines help remind us of who we are: creatures who are full of longing, who look for signs in the sky, who ask the things of the world, the very winds and stars, for large and small favors; creatures who chant and lament and rock rhythmically and turn those rhythms into memorable songs and stories and lullabies and charms; creatures who want winter to end and spring rains to turn things green again and to return to the ones we hold dear.”

–from “Does Memory Have a Future” (David Barber)
found in Arts & Letters: Journal of Contemporary Culture, Spring 2006