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“Vacancies” is a poem that responds to Percy Bysshe Shelley’s piece “Mont Blanc” by finding meaning not only in language, but also in the absence of language. I was particularly inspired by the poem’s ending—specifically, the lines that question, “And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, / If to the human mind's imaginings / Silence and solitude were vacancy?” (Shelley 142-144). Thus, meaning is derived in the absence of sound and company, with the forces of nature being powerful enough to create significance within “[s]ilence and solitude.” The form of the poem itself reflects this idea: blank space is used within the piece as a linguistic hiding space through which new meaning can be derived and new tensions explored, despite the absence of language in its place. Therefore, poetic meaning can be created through imaginative forces.
Moreover, I wanted to respond to the overarching theme of nature in Shelley’s poem. While human thought is but “a feeble brook,” the forces of nature, powerful and pure, constitute a river that inspires human response (Shelley 7). In response, I wanted to reflect Shelley’s thoughts on the power of nature in my poem, which can be seen in the repeated imagery of rivers, of stars, of “hibiscus in small patches”—all parts of nature that hold some kind of power over the poetic speaker, who “dodge[s]” and “mourn[s]” in response. At the same time, in the final segment of my poem, I wanted to draw attention to the relationship between the natural and the manmade, extending the subject matter of Shelley’s poem: “O the things we cultivate in place of self: homes, warm fireplaces, cold prayers, great bronze statues of dead men…“; The shallows of the city are meant to be drowned in.” Therefore, whether in nature or manmade, I wanted to reflect the significance of imagination and personal experience in relation to the raw power of nature. Only through imagination can these opposing ideas—the natural and the manmade—be reconciled in a kind of poetic synthesis, ultimately fulfilling the spiritual goals of Romanticism as a whole.