The spirit is too blunt an instrumentto have made this baby.Nothing so unskilful as human passionscould have managed the intricateexacting particulars: the tinyblind bones with their manipulating tendons,the knee and the knucklebones, the resilientfine meshings of ganglia and vertebrae,the chain of the difficult spine.Observe the distinct eyelashes and sharp crescentfingernails, the shell-like complexityof the ear, with its firm involutionsconcentric in miniature to minuteossicles. Imagine theinfinitesimal capillaries, the flawless connectionsof the lungs, the invisible neural filamentsthrough which the completed bodyalready answers to the brain.Then name any passion or sentimentpossessed of the simplest accuracy.No, no desire or affection could have donewith practice what habithas done perfectly, indifferently,through the body’s ignorant precision.It is left to the vagaries of the mind to inventlove and despair and anxietyand their pain.
We looked at this poem in a poetry workshop I went to recently, and I found this a fascinating piece. In it, the poet expresses the notion that the spirit is “too blunt” or vague a thing to create the intricate perfection that is a human baby.”Nothing so unskilful as human passions” could have “managed the intricate/exacting particulars”, writes Stevenson. This statement puzzled me, when I first read it. I think it is true (but also untrue!) and ironic, because human passions are exactlywhat create new life… Of course, something other than human passion is needed to create a baby (and the poem goes into great, clinical detail about “meshings of ganglia” and “neural filaments”) but you still need passion in order for two people to come together (whatever passion that might be — lust, love, or something hateful).The poet talks about “the body’s ignorant precision”. This line really stood out for me, and I think it sums up what Stevenson is saying about the body in this poem. She is presenting the body to us as an unthinking, efficient machine. It is something quite miraculous, and I find it very interesting that she goes into such detail about its inner workings in the medical, scientific language that is so seldom found in poetry. I think Anne Stevenson does this because, although she is praising the great machine of the body, she is also subtly hinting at the coldness or pointlessness of a perfectly working body if there is no passion or love.Any “passion” — any “desire or affection” — is depicted as vague and imprecise in the poem, and incapable or creating anything so useful as the human body. For me, this evokes the conflict between science and religion. Perhaps I’m taking it too far, but this poem reminded me of a person trying to disprove God’s existence by saying how precise the body’s chemical reactions are, and insisting that the “spirit is too blunt an instrument” to be the cause of life. It is not love that creates life, but rather the ignorantly precise and obliviously diligent chemical reactions in the body. It is left to “the vagaries of the mind to invent/ love and despair and anxiety/ and their pain”.I haven’t really come to a conclusion about what Stevenson wants to say in this poem. I suspect her intention is to provoke thought, rather than to offer any definitive argument. It certainly made me think! I am fascinated by the conflict in the poem between the forces of “vague love” and “ignorant precision”. But I don’t see why they should necessarily be mutually exclusive.
Reviewed by Emily Ardagh
