Memory sits at the core of both literature and lives. Yet forgetting is also a part of our brains’ daily working, bringing its own human truths and a necessary path for moving forward. Lewis Hyde’s new _A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past_, provides inspiration for a deep-dive discussion of memory’s other side, with this august panel of writers and neuroscientists: poets Jane Hirshfield and Margaret Gibson, author Lewis Hyde, and UCSF neuroscientists Aimee Kao, Bruce Miller, and Virginia Sturm.
Co-hosted by Litquake, San Francisco’s Literary Festival
Jane Hirshfield’s ninth poetry collection, Ledger (Knopf), appears in 2020. Chancellor emerita of the Academy of American Poets and recently elected into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, she works frequently at the intersection of poetry and science. Her work appears in The New Yorker, Atlantic, Poetry, et al.
Listen to Poet and Professor Margaret Gibson below:
Margaret Gibson, current Connecticut Poet Laureate, is the author of 12 books of poetry, including Not Hearing the Wood Thrush (2018) and Broken Cup (2014), centered on memory loss from Alzheimer’s disease and the gifts of sustaining presence through lament, acceptance, and love. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Connecticut.
Listen to author Lewis Hyde below:
Lewis Hyde’s recent book, A Primer for Forgetting (FSG, 2019), explores the many situations in which forgetfulness is more useful than memory—in myth, personal psychology, politics, art and spiritual life. A MacArthur Fellow, Hyde taught for many years at Kenyon College.
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