Summary

Page 46 - 48—“The Robin-Anthem” opens with an essay in which the author states that she had, on multiple occasions in a single week, substituted similar sounding words for the ones she meant to say. This disturbed her because words are, as she says, her “stock in trade” (46). Immediately, she wondered if she had Huntington’s disease and was unable to keep herself from performing a Google search on the subject. After concluding that she did not have the disease, she decided that she did have something else instead—a rekindled desire to memorize poetry. She relates the practice she began in her childhood, inspired by her Lear-spouting, Blake-quoting poet father. Lying in bed at night, nurturing her “secret and modest ambitions” to have a few poems always available in her mind, she began committing poems to memory (47). Eventually, James...