temporaryreality

In the introduction to Mystic Will, I've already come across what seems to bear a clear likeness to Atkinson's work on memory, at least from what I can tell from comments made by other book club members on JMG's site (the question related to Atkinson's method vs. associative methods as in traditional Ars Memorativa).

Here is Leland's summation of "his" method:

"To this I have added a succinct account of what is, I believe, the easiest and most comprehensive Art of Memory every conceived. There are on this subject more than five hundred works, all based, without exception, on the Associative system, which may be described as a stream that runs with great rapidity for a very short time but is soon choked up. This, I believe, as a means applied to learning, was first published in my work, entitled Practical Education. In it the pupil is taught the direct method; that is, instead of remembering one thing by means of another, to impress the image itself on the memory and frequently revive it. This process soon becomes habitual and very easy. In from one year to eighteen months a pupil can by means of it accurately recall a lecture or sermon. It has the immediate advantage, over all the associate systems, of increasing and enlarging the scope and vigour of the memory, or indeed of the mind, so that it may truly bear as a motto, Vires acquirit eundo - "it gains in power as it runs long." (p10)

I'll be interested to get to that point (chapter 7). I have read up on but not actively practiced memory techniques. Without those techniques, I've managed thus far to learn about 15 poems by heart but with admittedly incomplete success - I couldn't just up and recite them without first refreshing my memory and working to get them accessible. I tend to loop around a circuit of interests and passions, and though I'm not currently on the poetry end of the track, I'm sure I'll come back at some point and I'd love to add more to the repertoire.

Just for the heck of it, here's my poetry list so far (in no particular order):

1. A Ritual to Read to Each Other - William Stafford
2. When I have fears that I may cease to be - John Keats
3. Go Panther Pawed Where all the Mined Truths Sleep - Ray Bradbury
4. Fern Hill - Dylan Thomas
5. Exultation is the Going - Emily Dickinson
6. I Dwell in Possibility - Emily Dickinson
7. Sometimes when a bird cries out - Hermann Hesse
8. A Dream of Trees - Mary Oliver
9. End of Summer - Stanley Kunitz
10. The Hill - Mark Strand
11. Nothing Gold Can Stay - Robert Frost
12. To Know the Dark - Wendell Berry
13. The Lives of the Heart - Jane Hirshfield
14. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost
15. Lake and Maple - Jane Hirshfield
16. & 17. two by me

and some of the things I've thought about memorizing:

Yijing (I ching) hexagrams/names/associations
herbal actions/herbalism terminology
Chinese dynasties
geologic timeline
world history timeline
scansion terms
Greek or other pantheon
Morse code
folklore classifications
botany terminology
Russian letters
shorthand (Gregg)
list of logical fallacies