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Forgetfulness Billy Collins

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The poem Forgetfulness by Billy Collins is described about the nature of forgetting things. The writer of the poem is defined as someone who is suffering from forgetfulness. I get the feeling that the person who is writing this is intended to be someone older, someone who has lived through many experiences. The speaker is addressing everyone who will one day get one get old and realize that they too will start to forget things. I believe that the written himself is warning the audience about memory loss later in life and relates to memory loss as a whole and how it tends to affect himself and others. The title Forgetfulness is what the subject or poem itself is dictating. None of the words in his poem lack meaning. Every word was chosen carefully in order for himself to …show more content…

Each sentence builds an idea of the last one allowing one another to intertwine with each other. There is a use of figurative language through Forgetfulness. Along with the use of cliché.. “long ago you kissed the names of nice Muses goodbye.” Another example of figurative language used in this poem is the use of hyperbole. The hyperbole can be found when Collin states, “Whatever it is you are struggling to remember, it is not poised on the tip of your tongue, not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen. It had floated away down a dark mythological river...” Personification can also be found throughout the poem, “and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag...” this is an indication that quadric equation is a part of your memory that has yet been forgotten. Collin tends to write about the dark mythological river known as “River L”. Not knowing what the river itself stood for I tended to do some research and found that Collins is referring the River Lethe. This river is one of the fives rivers in Hades and it is also known as the river of forgetfulness. I thought this was an interesting part of the poem that some people would not end up

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