When memory speaks
With its intentional pun on the title of Nabakov's autobiography, Speak, Memory, and obvious indebtedness to Wordsworth Prelude, Timothy Brownlow pushes his “little bark” into the the treacherous tides of memory, evoking the lost paradis of his Irish childhood and youth, the various fall from grace, of nationality, family, and self, the experience of disillusionment, exile, and self-laceration, followed by a happy marriage, and the gradual restoration of faith in life, love, and the enduring power of once-loved places.
This re-integration of the psyche is mediated throughout by the author's reverance for the art of poetry, which has maintained his stability through spiritual heights and depths. By coming to terms with deep rifts in his inheritance, Brownlow asserts what Wordsworth calls “the growth of the poet's mind”.
This autobiographical poem is available in book form at Volume One bookstore in Duncan and wherever books are sold.