Corbin's Analysis of Meditation at Langunitas

     Language is something that bonds people together and makes it easier to communicate with others. People have very different perspectives on language and speak many different ones. Meditation at Languitas has an interesting approach when talking about language. Meditation at Languitas was written by Robert Hass who talked about ideas and how they make the world richer and fuller then a world that is just reality and every day things. This analysis will focus on the importance of words and the tie they may or may not have with language.

     Hass talks about an idea that some people believe, which is that some people think that talking about specific ideas and things will take away from the general ideas of life. For example, he says "the idea, for example, that each particular erases the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown- faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk of that black birch is, by his presence, some tragic falling off from a first world of undivided light." People think that the woodpeckers or the word blackberry are dull in comparison the what they are representative of. The idea that people think of words as nothing really and as a substitute to tie ideas together is incorrect. Toward the end of the poem Hass talks about how just the word can be a beautiful thing which completely refutes the idea that its more about the idea and nothing is significant about the word. Hass says "There are moments when the body is as numinous as words, days that are the good flesh continuing. Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry." Words help connect things to ideas in our mind and give us a foundation for emotion and ideas. Words are all beautiful and have a huge significance in language.