SESSION 9 — Making the Abstract Concrete

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Discussion:

One of the things that poetry does is give the invisible shape and form. Feelings, states of being, concepts, ideals … All of these can be approached through the poem so that we can hold, taste, smell them, feel their weight in our hands. And in doing so, something inside of us shifts or expands. We now carry that thing as an experience, a memory, into the world.

But how does poetry do this? Well, let’s find out.

• What do you notice first when you read this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye? Is it a feeling? An image? A rhythm?

• Where do you see an abstract idea (like kindness, sorrow, or loss) being made concrete? What specific words or images make it real for you?

• Does the poem change the way you think about kindness? If so, how does it do that?

Naomi Shihab Nye is an Arab American poet, editor, songwriter, and novelist. Born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, she began composing her first poetry at the age of six. In total, she has published or contributed to over 30 volumes of poetry.

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Writing Prompt:

Choose an abstract idea—something intangible, like love, loneliness, hope, grief, fear, joy, forgiveness. Now, instead of explaining it, imagine how someone might experience it.

• What does it feel like in the body? Is it heavy, light, sharp, warm?

• What does it taste like? Smell like? Sound like?

• Where does it exist in the world around us? Could it be something we hold? Something we move through?

Now, write a poem where you let your reader feel this abstract idea through images, sensations, and movement.

If you’d like to share your new creation with us, click below. We’d love to read your work!