Four Quartets

     That was a way of putting it - not very satisfactory:
A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,
Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle
With words and meanings. The poetry does not matter.

Of the entire Four Quartets, this may have been my favorite group of lines.  It's a tad self deprecating (as I have been of late, and that might be why I like it so much) and disparages the 'worn-out poetical fashion'.  The poetry does not matter, he says.  And yet, it does. We're to memorize Kubla Khan, and so the poetry must matter! Why do things matter? Maybe I'm thinking too deeply into this, but why do we memorize a poem to then later forget it over a laugh and "Well I used to know this!" Maybe this stems from my serious distaste for memorization in the long run.  I was a backstage kid unless there was singing going on, and even then I was usually still the stage manager.  Memorization is not my game, and I'm a little bit enchanted with the poet who will say himself that the poetry does not matter.  What matters is the point.  I've seen many a kid completely butcher a memorized line in a show, whilst the audience had no idea - the point was still conveyed.  The message, the intent, the meaning, the feeling: all of them were there.  It is not the words we try to communicate.  They are simply sounds connected in a cohesive fashion that we somehow understand, and so it is hard for me to try and memorize a poem when I've watched botched memorization amaze one audience so much more than the correct phrasing impressed an audience the next night.  Maybe I'm being contrary...I'm not sure.  It would make sense, it is in my blood.