Always Near Poets

Dear Brandeis community,

 

A few weeks ago I had Brandeis alumnus, teacher leader, and language arts faculty member Isaac Jacobs-Gomes on the Yudcast with me (Episode 42, “Points of Interest”) to talk about his writing practice and its relationship to his teaching practice. Over the course of the conversation, Isaac mentioned that as part of an interdisciplinary sixth grade project (in which the students were studying both the neuroscience and physiology of memory, as well as considering memory as it related to creative writing), the teaching team had been considering how different kinds of memory function in school. One type of memory in particular had been of interest to them lately, called episodic memory, which is essentially autobiographical memory (versus semantic memory, which is the recollection of information that we have not experienced). Isaac said the team had been thinking about the way the space of school can collect and conjure information for our students, and how the classroom itself can be an aid to memory for kids.

 

(Side note #1: It is one of the great pleasures of working at Brandeis that we have such a thoughtful faculty. Any time I get to sit and have conversations with our teachers, I am reminded again how lucky I am to be part of this community.)

 

(Side note #2: That sixth grade project sounds so fascinating!)

 

The conversation reminded me of a fascinating book I read fifteen years or so ago, Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, in those years in my life when phenomenological studies of domestic space were a more regular part of my reading diet (which is to say, as part of a minor in contemporary philosophy during graduate school). Bachelard weaves a lyrical, thoughtful engagement with how the spaces where we live shape our engagement with ourselves and the world. In particular, he also writes about how space shapes memory, as well: 

 

Something closed must retain our memories, while leaving them their original value as images. Memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.

 

While I do not agree that our memories of the outdoors do not add to our store of dreams like indoor memories, I love the notion of being “always near poets” in the context of memory and dreams, and the feelings we are often left with in their wake as the echo of lost poems.

 

This connection between memory and space reminds me of something that I have written about elsewhere in these pages, which is my insistence on using matches to light our Shabbat candles (rather than a lighter of some sort). The smell of the matches takes me back to dreamlike childhood memories of Hanukkah, the surrounding darkness of the winter, our small living room on Spaulding Avenue in Berkeley shimmering in the candlelight. Each week in striking the matches we build new memories of home for our family, new tones, new dreams.

 

This week I saw a similar approach to building episodic memories, in stopping in to Kate Callan’s fourth grade classroom. I have been making my way around the school, trying to get a feel for each subject, teacher, and classroom. I was struck on this day, walking in to Ms. Callan’s class, by the music that was playing—a calm, wordless melody. The students were spread throughout the class—some sitting at desks working on computers, some lying on the carpet hand-writing drafts, others sitting on the floor underlining and editing. The energy in the room, like the music, was tranquil, as the students each worked on the written portion of their native Californian project. As I kneeled down next to students I heard about their research interests—games, social hierarchies, or architecture. There was a special tone to the room, of quiet engagement, one that I have no doubt will collect and conjure important memories and dreams for those students, as they continue their journey as young writers.   

 

Wishing you all weekends full of poetic spaces, my friends.

 

Warmly,

 

Dan