Abstract Subjects

In my last post, I cited some examples of specific imagery and connected tropes. As I continued to read "Practical Gods" I found that for every poem that has clear, simple images, there is a poem that dwells heavily in the abstract--yet still includes abundant figurative language and imagery. I felt that these poems lacked the poignancy of the poems with more concrete, connected imagery; this is because it is difficult to write a poem about an abstract idea and have it not be trite. For example, "A Chance for the Soul":

Am I leading the life that my soul,
Mortal or not, wants me to lead is a question
That seems at least as meaningful as the question
Am I leading the life I want to live,
Given the vagueness of the pronoun "I,"
The number of things it wants at any moment.

Fictive or not, the soul asks for a few things only,
If not just one. So life would be clearer
If it weren't so silent, inaudible
Even here in the yard an hour past sundown
When the pair of cardinals and crowd of starlings
Have settled down for the night in the poplars.

Have I planted the seed of my talent in fertile soil?
Have I watered and trimmed the sapling?
Do birds nest in my canopy? Do I throw a shade
Other might find inviting? These are some handy metaphors
The soul is free to use if it finds itself
Unwilling to speak directly for reasons beyond me,
Assuming it's eager to be of service.

Now the moon, rising above the branches,
Offers itself to my soul as a double,
Its scarred face an image of the disappointment
I'm ready to say I've caused if the soul
Name the particulars and suggests amendments.

So fire are the threads that the moon
Uses to tug at the ocean that Galileo himself
Couldn't imagine them. He tried to explain the tides
By the earth's momentum as yesterday
I tried to explain my early waking
Three hours before dawn by street noise.

Now I'm ready to posit a tug
Or nudge from the soul. Some insight
Too important to be put off till morning
Might have been mine if I'd opened myself
To the occasion as now I do.

Here's a chance for the soul to fit its truth
To a world of yards, moons, poplars, and starlings,
To resist the fear that to talk my language
Means to be shoehorned into my perspective
Till it thinks as I do, narrowly.

"Be brave, Soul," I want to say to encourage it.
"Your student, however slow, is willing,
The only student you'll ever have."

My first reaction to this poem occurred after reading the first line: why would a poet attempt to write a poem addressing his "soul?" Not only is "soul" one of the least concrete, quantifiable things that I can think of, but it is also heavily used in popular culture in a shallow manner. Writing a meaningful poem about one's own soul seems like a task that is doomed from the beginning--the poet would be much better off not using "soul" as the subject of the poem. As I continued to read and consider the poem, "soul" as the subject seemed more justifiable, but certainly still a difficult subject to write a meaningful poem about.

Throughout the poem, Dennis personifies--I'm not sure that personification is the correct term--things associated with human beings, but not considered clearly living or inanimate: in the first stanza, the pronoun "I" is characterized as wanting things, and throughout the rest of the poem soul takes on the qualities of a human. (This makes sense, after all, the soul supposedly embodies all of the thoughts, desires, and emotions of a human.) By making "soul" take on human qualities ("Now I'm ready to posit a tug / or nudge from the soul"), Dennis removes it from the strictly abstract realm....this allows the reader to create a stronger, more specific view of the soul, but at the same time, it removes the deeper, pensive tone that repeatedly using a word like "soul" has.

In the third stanza, Dennis creates a metaphor: the speaker is a tree that grows and changes over time. The speaker asks a series of four questions pertaining to himself: "Have I planted the seed of my talent..? / Have I watered and trimmed the sapling? / Do birds nest in my canopy? / Do I throw a shade others might find inviting?" Certainly, this metaphor is logical: trees grow from seeds to large trees. Humans grow from babies to adults. Dennis adds a few more details...but then the speaker goes on say that "these are some handy metaphors." What is the purpose that Dennis would remind the reader that these are metaphors? This fact is not obscured in the least. It seems as though Dennis is making "soul" as a general concept more trivial and accessible. Like I've discussed, Dennis seeks to simplify religious themes in many of his poems. While not directly religious, the soul is certainly a religious concept. By describing it in specific terms, Dennis is reminding the reader that it does not have to be a nebulous, fuzzy concept.

Two final things: first, my favorite piece of imagery in the poem--"to resist the fear that to talk my language / means to be shoehorned into my perspective." I think that this is one of Dennis' best few lines of poetry. He keeps the language simple, but does not result to overly simple ideas. It's easy to imagine the foot being forced into the shoe via shoehorn...the reader can then translate this specific image to the idea of making language fit perspective. The result: the reader then realizes that there is often a discrepancy between spoken words and thoughts.

Finally, there is an interesting use of apostrophe in the final stanza: "Be brave, Soul." (Remember, an apostrophe is addressing an non-living thing or an abstract idea.) The fact that the speaker is addressing his soul as a separate entity is of interest; it makes "soul" take on concrete qualities that allow the reader to quantify the soul as more than an intangible concept. Additionally, it implies that the soul has the ability to have strengths and weaknesses; this is interesting because it makes it difficult to separate the human from the soul. At the same time, the distinct address of the soul by the speaker indicates that the two are indeed separate. I think that this is a fundamental idea in the poem: the soul and human share many qualities, yet are still distinct.