Abstractions

Let's get Gluck in here, too (in the spirit of past Laureates)--can't find the umlaut, sorry--

The Wild Iris~Louise Glück

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.

The Untrustworthy Speaker~Louise Glück

Don't listen to me; my heart's been broken.
I don't see anything objectively.

I know myself; I've learned to hear like a psychiatrist.
When I speak passionately,
That's when I'm least to be trusted.

It's very sad, really: all my life I've been praised
For my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight-
In the end they're wasted-

I never see myself.
Standing on the front steps. Holding my sisters hand.
That's why I can't account
For the bruises on her arm where the sleeve ends . . .

In my own mind, I'm invisible: that's why I'm dangerous.
People like me, who seem selfless.
We're the cripples, the liars:
We're the ones who should be factored out
In the interest of truth.

When I'm quiet, that's when the truth emerges.
A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers.
Underneath, a little gray house. The azaleas
Red and bright pink.

If you want the truth, you have to close yourself
To the older sister, block her out:
When I living thing is hurt like that
In its deepest workings,
All function is altered.

That's why I'm not to be trusted.
Because a wound to the heart
Is also a wound to the mind.


One of the pieces of advice poets are often given is "avoid abstractions" and "avoid cliche." While the latter category is harder to resurrect with success, using abstractions well is quite do-able; I abide more by Pound's "Go in fear of abstractions." One or two, used well, can invoke universal themes and ideas; a whole load of them can make a poem completely ungraspable and probably overwhelming to boot. I've seen very short poems contain Desire, Love, Hope, Fear, Death, God, Life, Time, etc etc--all of these grand themes crammed into just a few lines is pretty much a guarantee that the author has said a whole lotta nuthin'.

Hence, the Louise Gluck--she uses abstractions well, and is a good case study for any budding poet hell-bent on *saying* love, or heart, or anger, right in the text of the poem (after all, these can all be invoked without actually stating them explicitly, and often are in the best of poems). There is a power in being able to use abstractions well--I just recommend keeping Pound's adage in mind. The reason we should "go in fear" of abstractions is because they can mean so many different things to so many different people, the author runs the risk of not communicating much of anything new, novel, remarkable, memorable--what have you. The universality of the term ruins the specificity of the message.

For another abstraction master, enjoy the below, lesser-known offering of Frost:

Directive~Robert Frost

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry—
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there’s a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods’ excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone’s road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.
The height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.
And if you’re lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home. The only field
Now left’s no bigger than a harness gall.
First there’s the children’s house of make-believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny’s
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.
(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it,
So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t.
(I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

...look at how well Frost weaves his chosen abstractions into this little tale--they're almost invisible.

Your assignment: Choose just one or two abstractions, and try not to allow yourself any more. Build a poem around them. Here are some others to consider: Home, life, soul, spirit, joy, sadness, weakness, quietness, body, belief.
(You know you have an abstraction when you can ask this question: "What kind?" As in, "What kind of sadness? What kind of joy?" Or--"what do you mean?" as in, "When you say soul, what do you mean?" "Soul" is probably the most difficult of the bunch, actually.)

Happy abstracting!

Dani