Sarah Arvio's poem "Memory" is one of forty-nine poems collected in her first book, Visits to the Seventh, published in June 2003 by Alfred A. Knopf in New York. Poems in this collection capture traces of dialogue between a woman and several ethereal presences; they talk about the break-up of the woman's love affair and the death of her mother. In "Memory," which first appeared in Raritan Quarterly, the poet examines remembrances of the lovers' quarrel that lead to the break-up. Visits to the Seventh marks Arvio's literary debut, accomplished by Arvio in her forties after publishing poetry in several literary journals such as Poetry, The Paris Review, and Best American Poetry 1998. The poet's dialogues with these visitors—either ghosts of the dead, the voice of Arvio's inner life or a chorus of her poetic muses—speak to the meaning of life and the sense of longing created by the insufficiency of memory. "Memory," like most of Arvio's poems in this collection, is written in free verse, the term typically used to describe non-metrical and unrhymed poetry, common among contemporary poets. Metrical verse derives its structure from a set of formal rules for the length and arrangement of each line. Arvio groups her poems in stanzas often linked together by lines that continue a thought, a piece of dialogue or an action into the following stanza.