Untraditional Religious Themes

Progressive Health

We here at Progressive Health would like to thank you
For being one of the generous few who’ve promised
To bequeath your vital organs to whoever needs them.

Now we’d like to give you the opportunity
To step out far in front of the other donors
By acting a little sooner than you expected,

Tomorrow, to be precise, the day you’ve scheduled
To come in for your yearly physical. Six patients
Are waiting this very minute in intensive care

Who will likely die before another liver
And spleen and pairs of lungs and kidneys
Match theirs as closely as yours do. Twenty years,

Maybe more, are left you, granted, but the gain
Of these patients might total more than a century.
To you, of course, one year of your life means more

Than six of theirs, but to no one else,
No one as concerned with the general welfare
As you’ve claimed to be. As for your poems—

The few you may have it in you to finish—
Even if we don’t judge them by those you’ve written,
Even if we assume you finally stage a breakthrough,

It’s doubtful they’ll raise one Lazarus from a grave
Metaphoric or literal. But your body is guaranteed
To work six wonders. As for the gaps you’ll leave

As an aging bachelor in the life of friends,
They’ll close far sooner from the open wounds
Soon to be left in the hearts of husbands and wives,

Parents and children, by the death of six
Who are now failing. Just imagine how grateful
They’ll all be when they hear of your grand gesture.

Summer and winter they’ll visit your grave, in shifts,
For as along as they live, and stoop to tend it,
And leave it adorned with flowers or holly wreaths,

While your friends, who are just as forgetful
As you are, just as liable to be distracted,
Will do more than a makeshift job of upkeep.

If the people you’ll see tomorrow pacing the halls
Of our crowded facility don’t move you enough,
They’ll make you at least uneasy. No happy future

Is likely in store for a man like you whose conscience
Will ask him to certify every hour from now on
Six times as full as it was before, your work

Six times as strenuous, your walks in the woods
Six times as restorative as anyone else’s.
Why be a drudge, staggering to the end of your life

Under this crushing burden when, with a single word,
You could be a god, one of the few gods
Who, when called on, really listens?

Here is another example of Dennis’s variance in style. He uses direct address again, which is appropriate because it provides the sense of urgency that would be necessary to convince someone to die in exchange for the lives of six others. Additionally, almost every stanza is open; this indicates that the entire poem creates a single cohesive thought. The poem ends with a question mark; this is fitting since the poem questions the value of a single life in comparison to multiples lives.

The conversational tone allows the reader to flow through each of the stanzas and understand the general idea on the first read. The tone of the poem changes throughout; at the beginning, the poem is similar to an emotionally wrenching plea for money by a charity. The plea, however, is tongue-in-cheek: the idea of choosing to die so that six other people could have your organs is laughable…but as the poem continues, the reader realizes that there is some logic (and seriousness) in this proposal—isn’t, as the speaker suggests, the lives of six people more valuable than the life of one? This, I think, is the intention of the poem: a rebuff of selfishness, the poem makes us consider what effect complete selflessness would have. The lines that suggest that while the subject has only twenty years left, the combined total of those whose lives would be saved equals one hundred years is clever; it presents an argument that is surprising, yet intuitive. Why don’t people who will only live another few decades give up their lives in order to provide far more total years for half-a-dozen people? Selfishness: sacrifice is not in your best interest.

In the final stanza, Dennis relates the conceit of the poem back to the non-traditional religious themes of the volume. With a single word, the speaker emphasizes, that the subject of the poem could be a “god” who really listens. This implies that the traditional, Judeo-Christian god doesn’t listen, and it also suggests that one of the features of a “god” is to act as a savior. The poem is a secularization of traditional religious beliefs, yet it still relies on familiar religious ideas. The validity of the one Biblical allusion is quickly discounted: “It’s doubtful they’ll raise one Lazarus from a grave / Metaphoric or literal. But your body is guaranteed / To work six wonders.” Once again, Dennis succeeds in weaving poems that combine traditionally religious aspects as well as secular portions. Interestingly, these lines emphasize self-reliance by citing a Biblical example.

The title of this poem (“Progressive Healthcare”) as well as the title of the volume (“Practical Gods”) demonstrates the themes of the volume: spirituality is individualistic, the history of religion is important in developing religious beliefs today, and the best view of religion is the practical one.