Contrast

Abstract concepts are incredibly weird to me. To us, they seem pretty obvious and self-explanatory. We all know what the soul, the mind, love, and time are because we've grown up with those terms thrown around, and over time, we vaguely understand what they are and how to use them in a sentence. But how would you go about explaining those topics to someone who has no clue what they mean? I feel like poetry is great at explaining those kinds of topics by teasing out their definition without ever explicitly saying what it means.

Like poetry, art can also be great at uncovering these meanings. Chiaroscuro art is an art form that focuses on the contrast between light and dark in paintings. By contrasting the lighter subject with the darker background, the artist ensures that the subject comes off as important to the viewer. Not only this, but the viewer's eyes naturally drift toward the focus of the piece. Similarly, in poetry, to convey the true depth and meaning of a subject, the poet can create comparisons between two topics to create a contrast. 

Take my mentor poem "Youth Insatiate" by Elsa Gidlow. The poem uses the contrast between the speaker's desire for peace and their understanding of life's despairs throughout the poem. The speaker wishes for "skies unscarred by poems," even if it's the "peace the rotting dead possess." This contrasts with the third stanza, when the speaker realizes that the beauty of life comes from pain and struggle: "And I have learned that Beauty is salt blood / Pain-wrung from the unconquerable heart." 

Finally, the poem concludes with the speaker enjoying the passion, joy, and grief in life as he advises to pause and savor life's experiences, even the difficult ones. This contrast then reveals that life's difficulties are necessary to create meaning and beauty in life.