Abstractions are words or phrases that refer to concepts rather than specific things. Things like truth, beauty, love, and pain are abstract. If you can’t see it, hear it, touch it, taste it, or smell it, it’s probably an abstraction.
Abstractions should generally be avoided in poetry. They are too broad and vague for readers to hold on to. They aren’t precise. Readers may picture different things when they read the word “truth” or “beauty.”
If I say that the night was beautiful, can you picture it? “Beautiful” doesn’t really tell you much about the night. Perhaps it was a summer night with a billion sparkling stars above, and crickets and frogs singing beyond my front porch. Perhaps it was a dark night deep in winter when a three-foot blanket of snow covered everything like a heavy comforter, and the stillness was broken only by the sound of church bells chiming across the street. These are two very different scenes, yet I could call either one beautiful. You’ll be able to picture the scene better, though, if I just describe it. You can decide for yourself whether or not it is beautiful.
Readers generally don’t relate well to poems that use a lot of abstractions. They relate better to poems using concrete imagery. Poems with concrete imagery are much more interesting than poems that are filled with abstractions. In fact, if you use too many abstractions in your work, readers probably won’t even know what you’re writing about.
You can use the occasional abstraction in your poetry. In fact, it’s probably unavoidable at times. If you write a poem about truth, however, make sure you go on to tell the reader what the truth is. If you write a poem about pain, make sure you then explain the pain you are talking about.
In most cases, it’s better just to show the reader what you want them to see rather than tell them. A good rule in poetry is show, don’t tell. Instead of telling the reader something is horrifying, describe the horrifying thing so that the reader comes to the conclusion that it’s horrifying. Unless the reader is a close friend or family member, he or she probably won’t care if you were horrified by something. You’ll have to make the reader care by describing it in such a way that he or she feels the horror.
There are, as you may have realized by now, exceptions to most rules in poetry. Following is an example of a poem in which abstractions are used well. The poem is Lullaby by W. H. Auden.
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
The abstractions work in this poem because they are used in a precise way. They are also used in a unique and interesting way, such as the second line where Auden describes his arm as faithless.
Practice
Choose a poem you’ve written in the past that contains a number of abstractions. Try rewriting it using concrete images in place of the abstractions.
If you want to take on a more challenging task, try writing a poem that uses abstractions in a precise way, like the poem by W. H. Auden. Be forewarned, however, this is difficult to do well!
