Vagueness of situation can prove problematic in poetry written by anyone, be they new at the art or a seasoned professional. Though vagueness can be problematic it can also be integral to the structure and power of a poem. No matter how detail oriented the poem is in its construction there is always room for interpretation of its details, whether they are lifted directly from life situations or born on the fringe of the fantastic. Negative space, vagueness, can do positive work in a poem in its generation of interpretive flexibility in its frameworks, voice, narrative coherence, metaphor, thematic presence, and atmosphere. In C. D. Wright’s “More Blues and the Abstract Truth,” the reader is given a poem with a very loose narrative structure, a looseness that produces a pervasive vagueness of situation that serves the poem in a positive way. The looseness, the vagueness of situational sign posts, shifts the weight of the poem, the points at which meaning seeking readers can pull information from, to its other elements like metaphor, theme, authentic detail, and syntax.
“More Blues and the Abstract Truth” is littered with authentic detail. The details are as variable as they are poignant; from the paperboy who “comes to collect / with a pit bull” (3), to “the rot / under the floormat” (14), to the confessional honesty of the speaker’s “frequent bleeding / the tender nipples” (13), to the zucchini that somehow “keep[s] on the sill” “even at the end of June” (8). These concrete images ground the poem and paint a keen image of the world the speaker inhabits. Dressing the authentic details is the sparing use of, for their subject matter, engaging metaphors. The speaker intertwines authentic detail with visceral imagery in her thoughts on her gynecologist, “another gouging mechanic,” (17) and then later plays with the language of religion through syntax to generate another metaphor rich in meaning, “the word / has broken… with the wine. And the loaf. / And the excellent glass of the body” (32). The richness of the second instance of metaphor comes from the body of knowledge indigenous to the reader that is activated with the loaded words emphasized by the syntactical irregularities she uses to introduce the metaphorical idea of filling the body with religion as though it were a wine glass. The end of the poem in particular is brimming with authentic details presented as frenetic ideas of a racing mind through parataxis. The speaker asks the grandmother in the poem how a body can “go on drying / the flatware” (27), “fix rainbow trout” (28), and “grout the tile” (28). The grandmother replies with similar syntax that performs the opposite function: “Even. If. The. Sky. Is. Falling. / My. Peace. Rose. Is. In. Bloom” (38). Because of the loose narrative structure the reader does not know if the speaker is at the grandmother’s house, or on the phone with her, or why the speaker is speaking to her grandmother, or if the speaker is ill or well, or if the speaker is dreaming the entire sequence, or if the grandmother is even alive or if the entire exchange is a memory. The dearth of information forces the reader to focus on what is presented: the authentic detail, metaphor, and syntax. From this shifted focus the thematic content of the poem becomes clear and is set off by the title of the poem. Though the speaker’s mind is full, evidenced by the plethora of detail, and yet disquieted, evidenced by the two metaphors that referenced physical and devotional discomfort and the unusual syntax of the speaker’s voice, the speaker is finding support in the voice of her grandmother, real or imagined.
Vagueness of situation can be detrimental to any poet and any poem if not carefully managed. A haphazardly incomplete canvas does not a painting make. Because C. D. Wright’s poem “More Blues and the Abstract Truth” dabbles in the boundary between concrete detail and loose narrative it must strike a balance between what is present on the page and what is not. For “More Blues and the Abstract Truth” C. D. Wright chooses to cut away much of the narrative aside from bits of dialog because what shores the poem against the potential tide of incoherence is its strong and familiar theme, its use of visceral metaphor, authentic detail, and surprising but effective syntactical devices. To have included more narrative structure would have been to beat the reader over the head with the poems content. Too many brush strokes ruin the painting and what C. D. Wright gives the reader to work with is just adequate to see the beauty in its craft and not an ounce more.
