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Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen
Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt
Where can I go
without my mount
all eager and quick
How will I know
in thicket ahead
is danger or treasure
when Body my good
bright dog is dead
How will it be
to lie in the sky
without roof or door
and wind for an eye
with cloud for shift
how will I hide
When we wonder if a text is poetry or prose a good way to answer
that question is to paraphrase the text. If your paraphrase is just a
little bit longer than the original (no more, say, than 15%) you are
probably dealing with prose. If your paraphrase is a lot longer
than the original (50% or more) you are probably dealing with
poetry.
I asked AI to paraphrase May Swenson's "Question" and here is
what artificial intelligence came up with:
Body, you are my home,my means of movement, my loyal
companion. You are how I live, travel, act in the world—What will
become of me when you fail, when you die? Where will I find rest if I
no longer have you to sleep in? How will I move through life if I no
longer have you to carry me? How will I pursue my goals, my
desires, if you're no longer here to help me seek them? Where can I
possibly go without you—my strong, eager, responsive body? How
will I navigate the world ahead, how will I recognize what's
dangerous or valuable, without your senses and instincts to guide
me? You, Body, my faithful and spirited companion—like a bright,
loyal dog—when you are gone, how will I continue? What will it be
like to exist beyond this physical world—to float, exposed in some
vast space without protection, without boundaries, with nothing
but the wind to perceive with? Clothed only in clouds, how will I
conceal myself? How will I find safety, or peace, when I no longer
have this body to shelter me?
Swenson's poem is 83 words. AI takes a whopping 191 words to
paraphrase it, suggesting that it's not just poetry, but very good
poetry. The aim of a paraphrase is to fully explain a text's
meaning. Prose tends to be explicit already, so there's not much to
add when paraphrasing. Poetry employs compressed, figurative
language via metaphor, simile, hyperbole, personification, etc.
The paraphraser's commitment to make these and other tropes
explicit requires additional wording, rendering the paraphrase
much longer than the poetry it "explains."
Paraphrase replaces the concrete vehicles of metaphors with the
universalities or generalities they imply. The seven words in
Swenson's first two linesexpand to twenty-one in AI's paraphrase:
"Body, you are my home, means of movement, my loyal
companion. You are how I live, travel, act in the world."
Paraphrase asks little or nothing of its readers. We listen passively
as someone explains the meaning of a text in detail. The poet,
however, activates our imaginations, emotions, and aesthetic
sensibilities. We become participants in constructing the poem's
meaning.
The first thing we feel is the alliterative thrill of horse, house,
hound. "Question" is in a sense a love poem, but there's no need
for the poet to explicitly proclaim her love for her body. Most of
us have deep affection for houses that have been our homes in the
past, as well as for the animals in our lives. Swenson's alliterative
triad radiates that love and affection via both sound and meaning.
Her comma-less, emphatic, alliterative triad leaves us with a
vibrant sense of magnitude. The body we love is loved not for one,
but for many reasons. The lines that pose the poem's first
question (what will I do
/ when you are fallen
) remind us of
the grief we felt when a beloved cat or dog died.
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The most redolent word in the opening stanza, however, is its
last: The implications of that carefully chosen word
fallen
disappear in AI's literal paraphrase: "What will become of me
when you fail, when you die?"
That word
does everything AI's
eleven words do and more. Fallen Cities; fallen Kings and Queens
, above all, fallenWarriors.
It clearly suggests that the body will
die; but it also suggests that life is a battle and that our poet will
be defenseless once her white knight has fallen from his horse.
Who would prefer AI's belabored prose to Swenson's poetry? The
simplicity of her diction is astonishing: 76 of her 83 words contain
just one to five characters. (None of AI's Latinate
words—companion, responsive, navigate, recognize, valuable,
physical, boundaries, perceive—could have a place in her poem)
Even AI doesn't completely defuse the poet's anguish at
anticipating the time when
Body my good bright dog is
dead
, although paraphrase demands that her metaphor be
converted to simile with "like a bright, loyal dog." We know very
well that Swenson's body isnot literally a dog, but she is too great
a poet to depower her image by taking a step down from the
forcefulness of metaphor to the qualification of simile. We
intuitively understand and are thrilled by Swenson's metaphors as
we read them.
In "Where can I go / without my mount / all eager and quick"
mount
is the perfect metaphor to make us feel the buoyancy, the
headiness, the rising up of the spirit when the body is healthy;
thicket
makes us feel the danger of getting entangled; of being
unable to move and make decisions once the body fails;
shift
is
chosen for its ambiguity, being an undergarment to cover
nakedness as well as the
shift
that takes place, if (big IF) the
spirit becomes immortal.
Notice that the poet imagines that when her body fails she will
end up in the sky
. That word is only a short way off from
"heaven" and the upcoming
cloud
might suggest the veil through
which God appears to Moses several times in the bible.
Still, despite the implied religious allusions, Swenson doesn't go
there. Sky just feels like the sky, the cloud like insubstantial mist
that does not provide effective cover. Our poet's parting
question—how will I hide
—is a lament for her vulnerability. The
body provided a refuge, a den for her spirit. We know how
quickly clouds change and move away. As protection they are
unreliable.
Finally, although there are eight questions in this poem, its title
implies that there is one overriding "Question" which I'd
paraphrase as "What will remain of my spirit after my body fails?"
If the spirit ends with the body's failure, the answer is oblivion.
Even more troubling for Swenson, however, is the possibility that
the spirit will remain after the body fails, since she finds
disembodiment mysterious and disconcerting. Catholic theology
guarantees "The Resurrection of the Body," best exemplified by
Jesus Christ rising from the dead in the flesh, but Swenson rejects
that as a possibility.
I suspect that our poet keeps the most important question off
stage because it is unanswerable. She can imagine her beloved
body dying, but not her spirit; nor can she welcome her spirit
surviving, diminished by the loss of her five senses and the
amazing world they perceive.
May Swenson's "Question" is both an elegy and a love song. Like
many long-term elderly couples, her body and spirit have become
so intertwined that she cannot imagine what it will be like to live
without her mate. For her, a spirit stripped of the joys of the body
existing through eternity is not a welcome prospect.
All images courtesy of ChatGPT's Good Bright Dog, AI
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