A World without Objects Is a Sensible Emptiness (1950). Content and Description

As its title punningly suggests, this poem celebrates a world of sensory (or “sensible”) experience—a world of material objects, tangible things, and physical sensations—as opposed to a world that is purely abstract, rational, or reasonable (“sensible”). The first half of the work describes the movement of the spirit toward an entirely spiritual realm, but the second half implores the spirit not to abandon (but indeed to embrace and mesh with) the world known through the senses. In the final stanza the speaker subtly reminds his readers of one of the most famous instances of the union of body and soul—the Christian Incarnation, in which God became man and in which the spirit fully united with the flesh.

In the manner of the 17th-century metaphysical writers whom Wilbur admires deeply (in fact, the title of the poem is adapted from one of those writers, Thomas Traherne), the first three stanzas of the work amount to a metaphysical conceit (an extended comparison, developed over many lines). Although the comparison of the movement of the soul to the movement of camels across a desert may seem remote from common experience, that is part of the poem’s point: The imagery, at this stage, is appropriately abstract and distant, because the poem associates the moving camels with the common human temptation to turn one’s back on the familiar world of everyday life.

The camel imagery also, however, foreshadows the imagery at the very end of the poem, where the Christian nativity is implied, thereby reminding us of the wise men, presumably on camels, who followed a star across a desert to discover the perfect union of the world and the spirit. By tying the imagery of the opening stanzas to the imagery of the final lines, Wilbur achieves the kind of unity prized by writers and critics with a strong interest in formal harmony and coherence (including Wilbur himself).

As the poem proceeds from the remote imagery of its opening lines, its language becomes more and more obviously religious, especially in describing the halos depicted in paintings of medieval Christian saints (lines 15-18), until it finally culminates in phrasing that is simultaneously familiar (as in the references to trees, country creeks, and barns) and strangely mysterious and otherworldly (as in the reference to the “supernova” [l. 26]). The final two words—“light incarnate”—not only look back to the imagery of lines 13-18 (thus enhancing the poem’s formal unity) but also imply the birth of Christ. (The phrase gains extra emphasis because it breaks the previously established rhyme scheme.)

Meanwhile, the poem also offers its share of the typical pleasures we associate with Wilbur’s verse, such as his use of striking imagery (as in the “tall camels of the spirit” [l. 1]), clever sound effects (as in the reference to the “sawmill shrill of the locust” [l. 3]), alliteration (as in the reference to “whole honey” [l. 3]), literary allusions (as in his reference to Traherne both in the title and in line 6), and assonance (as in the reference to “sunken sub” [l. 24]). Here as in so many other poems by Wilbur, one has the sense that every line (in fact, every syllable) has been carefully crafted and polished. It is as if Wilbur, in writing this poem, has tried to enact the very kind of incarnation the poem celebrates—a perfect union of thought and imagery, idea and sound.

For Discussion or Writing:
1. Compare and contrast this work with T. S. Eliot’s poem “Journey of the Magi.” How do the poems resemble and differ from each other in their imagery, tones, points of view, and themes?

2. Compare and contrast this work with Wallace Stevens’s poem “Sunday Morning.” How do the poems differ in their implied attitudes toward Christianity, and how are they similar in their emphasis on the importance of the world we know through our senses? In what ways do both poems reject the abstract and ideal in favor of concrete, material reality?

3. Compare and contrast this work with Wallace Stevens’s poem “The Plain Sense of Things.” What attitudes do the poems take toward the relation between the imagination and reality? Why does Stevens emphasize such plain, concrete imagery in his poem? Why is the imagery in Wilbur’s poem often more abstract? How is the use of imagery in each poem somewhat ironic in view of the argument each work makes?