#59: The Spirit is Too Blunt an Instrument

Anne Stevenson's poem on the miracle of birth

In fractured times as now, it is easy to forget the very basics, as here the birth of a baby, and the miracle that represents. The poet, Anne Stevenson, born in England, educated in the US, and now living in Durham, northern England, captures the miracle from a different perspective – the mechanical (Anne calls it ‘ignorant’) - precision with which a woman’s body produces a child.

The spirit is too blunt an instrument

to have made this baby.

Nothing so unskilful as human passions

could have managed the intricate

exacting particulars: the tiny

blind bones with their manipulating tendons,

the knee and the knucklebones, the resilient

fine meshings of ganglia and vertebrae,

the chain of the difficult spine.

Observe the distinct eyelashes and sharp crescent

fingernails, the shell-like complexity

of the ear, with its firm involutions

concentric in miniature to minute

ossicles. Imagine the

infinitesimal capillaries, the flawless connections

of the lungs, the invisible neural filaments

through which the completed body

already answers to the brain.

Then name any passion or sentiment

possessed of the simplest accuracy.

No, no desire or affection could have done

with practice what habit

has done perfectly, indifferently,

through the body's ignorant precision.

It is left to the vagaries of the mind to invent

love and despair and anxiety

and their pain.

This perspective is not one we consider often, yet we do say ‘Look at this remarkable small hand, see the veins in the whorls of this tiny ear, regard this eye, how lovely, how miraculous!’. So, we notice – and quickly pass on, probably to the emotional details of the birth, the pain of the labour, and so on. The body in Anne’s poem is programmed, ‘habit has done perfectly’, and the mind is the vagrant partner – ‘Nothing so unskilful as human passions’. The spirit could not possibly have created this: ‘Nothing…/could have managed the intricate/exacting particulars’. This is a beautiful paradox: Anne knows that it is exactly ‘human passions’ that created the coming together of the seeds, the sperms and eggs in the first place, but it is the body itself and its ‘perfect indifference’ that has produced the outcome. I think Anne Stevenson has here hit upon the exquisite relationship between a woman’s mind - and all its ‘emotions, spirits, passions, and sentiments’ - and her body as an habitual, precise, manufacturing instrument (‘made this baby’).

Notice how Anne uses language to match her hypothesis. The beautiful, strange, hypnotic words that describe the parts of bodies – ‘the manipulating tendons, the resilient, fine meshings of ganglia and vertebrae, /the shell-like complexity/of the ear, with its firm involutions/concentric in miniature to minute/ossicles. Imagine the/infinitesimal capillaries, the flawless connections/of the lungs, the invisible neural filaments’ – all these words refer to the down-to-earth nature of the body and yet they possess the glamour, the bravado of the spirit. In contrast, the words associated with spirit and emotion – ‘desire, affection, love, despair, anxiety, and pain’ – are less glamorous, plain by comparison. This is a juxtaposition of rare imagination.

Anne also notices that at a young age, that of a new-born baby, the body is the most developed feature; she even calls the body ‘completed’. The mind has still a long developmental period ahead. I had never imagined the body at birth as a completed object until reading this poem. But if one reflects, the body at birth is as perfect as it is ever going to be; although it grows in the following years, it deteriorates quickly. My goodness, how it deteriorates. In contrast, the mind develops and can sustain its development progress much longer than the body can – unless it is overtaken by a dread dementia.

And then, the coup de grace of the hypothesis! Anne Stevenson does not allow us to become side-tracked by the duality of the mind/body issue. Not at all. She recognizes that it is a three-part symbiosis when she says: …’through which the completed body/already answers to the brain.’ Philosophers have been arguing for centuries about where the mind stops and the body starts, and the relationship between the mind and the brain. Anne says categorically that the ‘completed body already answers to the brain’. Rather dismissively, regarding emotions she writes: ‘It is left to the vagaries of the mind to invent/love and despair and anxiety/and their pain.’ The vagaries, those mindless, random wanderings, she makes it sound like these are the easy stuff; those parts of our lives that we fret over for the whole of our lives are not really of significance compared to the mechanics of procreation and birth.

Nil nisi bonum ab ovo.