LEARNING BY HEART

Shared knowledge of a poem can break the ice between two people, like the discovery of a mutual friend. Amanda Gorman, who performed her poem "The Hill We Climb" at Joe Biden's inauguration, recently told Time magazine that the poet's task is to inspire hope amid gloom: "to observe that darkness, to listen to it, but also to lead people out of the shade." "Cognitive scientists like to talk about our long-term memory and our 'working memory,'" he tells me. Once we've memorized a poem, it becomes lodged in our long-term memory, which frees up our working memory to reflect more deeply on its meaning and significance. Because good poems concentrate so much thought and emotion into such a small space,