Essay Questions

How does the poet use repetition?

This poem is composed in free verse without any formal meter. It is also lacking a rhyme scheme. Thus, the effect of reading the poem avoids the sing-song quality that characterizes much poetry. There is a musical quality to the poem, however, in the form of the recurrences of leitmotifs. The first such introduction of this theme of repetition is the example of a literary device known as anaphora which is characterized by a verbatim repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of a line. In this case, the first two lines of the poem feature the phrase “You do not have to.” This negation is then reversed in the fourth line with the near-anaphora “You only have to do.” The musicality of this repetition is akin to a song opening with the repetition and slight alteration of a memorable guitar riff or drumbeat. Later in the poem, the phrase “Meanwhile the” will open three different lines, each time substituting a different noun: “the world,” “the sun” and “the wild geese.” Each of these “meanwhiles” leads to an example of how the natural world continues on as always, unaware of and uninterested in the despair of human lives around them. This repetition gives the poem a musical element similar to verses in a song with different lyrics commenting on the same theme. The lack of meter and rhyme makes the poem avoid sounding sing-songy, but these examples of repetition do endow the poem with a feeling of a song.

Is the phrase “soft animal of your body” supposed to be literal or figurative?

After telling the reader that they should dismiss all this moral instruction about being good and seeking penance and salvation for having sinned, the speaker reverses course and offers instructional life lessons herself. The tweaking of the repetition of “you do not have to” becomes the “you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” Any comparison of human beings to animals obviously inspires an initial perception that metaphor is at work, but it is important in this context to remember, ultimately, humans are just part of the mammal animal kingdom. Stripped of all the evolutionary advancements of our brains—and stripped of our clothing—we are not only just animals but especially vulnerable animals. Humans really are, quite literally, soft animals, and what the body craves as protection against predators and elements is really all that is absolutely required in the end. So, although it certainly seems as if this is would be the figurative language of one sort or another, the phrase is actually intended to be taken literally.

The wild geese don’t actually appear much in the poem, so what is their significance?

The title strongly suggests that this will be a poem about geese. Or, at the very least, that descriptions of the geese will be a central element. In fact, the birds do not even make their first appearance until the poem is half over. And when they do finally appear, they are awarded no greater significance than the sun and the rain. Or, at least, that is how it seems. Ultimately, the geese are forwarded as the central symbol of the poem in a way that directly links back to the “soft animal of your body” reference. The wild geese are illustrations of soft animals following the instincts of loving what their body is telling them. Their body tells them to fly south to warmer climates at one point and to fly back to where they started at another. They do not go south and despair over their long flight back north and decided to stay permanently in the south. Their body tells them when it is time to seek warmth and their body also tells them when it starting to get too warm. The wild geese gain significance by becoming symbols of the purity of nature which does not allow for overintellectualizing life-or-death circumstances.