Analyzed By Ava Anderson
Information:
Book: “Sharks in the Rivers”
Poet: Ada Limón
Poem: “This Practice
Link: “This Practice”
Painting: The Persistence of Memory
Artist: Salvador Dali
Link: “The Persistence of Memory”
Comparison of “This Practice” and “The Persistence of Memory”
“This Practice” by Ada Limón is a poem exploring the process of getting older and how people expect it to affect our memories. She writes ”They say the first thing that goes is the short term memory,” inferring that as you grow older you start to lose memory of the information you have learned recently. She gives examples of these bits and pieces of information such as “your keys,” or “your address. I interpret these particular memories as small, less meaningful thoughts. But I had to ask why when you go to see a grandparent they are almost always full of deep, detailed stories from their childhood that allow you to fully imagine yourself in them. As I further read the poem she writes “I like to think it’s just a matter of practice,” which means you can remember things that have had more meaning to you and are around you more and embedded in your life. She gives examples such as “our favorite light,” or “our brother’s face.” These memories will stick with you forever through “practice” or experience with them in your life. You will always remember your best friend’s faces but might not always remember the car they drive once you have grown older. Finally in the end of the poem Ana describes how you can tell the difference between a short term memory that you could possibly forget and a long term memory that sticks with you forever. Ana wrote “Like the Russian soldier who had to make up a word to say how hard he would fight” which was her description of having so much passion or feeling towards something that you would go out of your way to remember it. This poem reminded me of a famous painting I learned about when I was younger. That painting was “The Persistence of Memory” by Salvador Dali. In this painting he depicts certain things from his memory which look like. You can see strong structured mountains in the background which look clear from his memory; something he purposefully remembered, and then there are melting clocks which I think could resemble slowly losing the shorter term details that are not worth remembering. Overall I think these two pieces of art resemble each other in many ways creating a very complex idea that memory is a choice. If you care enough about something or a person you will find yourself exercising and practicing them in your mind, keeping them as a solid memory.