When we tell a story,
We are living
Memory.
In ancient Greece, the Muses, the dainty-footed daughters of Memory, were thought to inspire artists. It isn’t knowing, but remembering, that makes us create. This would explain why so much great art arises from trauma, nostalgia, or testimony.
But why alliteration?
Why the pulsing percussion, the string of syllables?
It is the poet who pounds the past back into you.
The poet transcends “telling” or “performing” a story & instead remembers it, touches, tastes, traps its vastness.
Only now can Memory, previously marooned, find safe harbor within us.
Feel all these tales crushing our famished mouth.