Day 23 Personification

Personification is a trope in which abstractions, animals, ideas, and inanimate objects are given human character, traits, abilities, or reactions. Personification is particularly common in poetry, but it appears in nearly all types of artful writing.

When discussing the ways that animistic religions personify natural forces with human qualities, scientists refer to this process as “anthropomorphizing,” sometimes with derogatory overtones.

A special sub-type of personification is prosopopoeia, in which an inanimate object is given the ability of human speech.

Apostrophe (not to be confused with the punctuation mark) is a special type of personification in which a speaker in a poem or rhetorical work pauses to address some abstraction that is not physically present in the room. (Notes from Dr. Kip Wheeler.)

John Ciardi uses personification to embody a special kind of homesickness, which yearns not so much for a place, but rather for times past, and for lifestyles gone. He explored these hungers in his poem, “Talking Myself to Sleep at One More Hilton.” The two yearnings, one physical, the other more elusive, are often so intertwined that it is hard to see the boundaries: one sharpens the pain caused by the other. (Adapted from This Old House by the Lake by Judith Petres Balogh.)

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Talking Myself to Sleep at One More Hilton
by John Ciardi

I have a country but no town.
Home ran away from me. My trees
ripped up their white roots and lay down.
Bulldozers cut my lawn. All these
are data toward some sentiment
like money: God knows where it went.

There was a house as sure as time.
Sure as my father’s name and grave.
Sure as behave and misbehave.
Sure as lamb stew. Sure as sin.
As warts. As games. As a scraped shin.

There was a house, a chicken run,
a garden, a guilt, a rocking chair.
I had six dogs and every one
was killed in traffic. I knew where
their bones were once. Now I’m not sure.
Roses used them for manure.

There was a house early and late.
One day there came an overpass.
It snatched the stew right off my plate.
It snatched the plate. A whiff of gas
blew up the house like a freak wind.
I wonder if I really mind.

My father died. My father’s house
fell out of any real estate.
My dogs lie buried where time was
when time still flowed, where now a slate
stiff river loops, called Exit Nine.
Why should I mind? It isn’t mine.

I have the way I think I live.
The doors of my expense account
open like arms when I arrive.
There is no cloud I cannot mount
and sip good bourbon as I ride.
My father’s house is Hilton-wide.

What are old dog bones? Were my trees
still standing would I really care?
What’s the right name for this disease
of wishing they might still be there
if I went back, though I will not
and never meant to?—Smash the pot,

knock out the windows, blow the doors.
I am not and mean not to be
what I was once. I have two shores
five hours apart, soon to be three.
And home is anywhere between.
Sure as the airport limousine,

sure as credit, sure as a drink,
as the best steak you ever had,
as thinking—when there’s time to think—
it’s good enough. At least not bad.
Better than dog bones and lamb stew.
It does. Or it will have to do.

 
     
 

Questions for Discussion:

  1. What happened to the speaker’s birthplace? How do you know?
  2. What happened to the neighborhood in which the speaker grew up? How do you know?
  3. At present, what position does the speaker of this poem occupy in society? How do you know?
  4. What is the speaker’s attitude toward the life he is now leading, as compared with the life of his childhood? How do you know?
  5. Discuss the poet’s use of personification. Cite examples.
  6. Discuss the poet’s use of repetition. Cite examples.
  7. Explain the significance of the title.
  8. “In my Father’s house are many mansions,” Jesus said (John 14:2). How does knowledge of this quote make line 36 ironical?
  9. “Country” is one of the central concepts developed in the poem, along with the parallel concepts of “town” and “house.” How has the speaker’s understanding of each concept changed as he has matured? How do you know?
  10. In both “Talking Myself to Sleep at One More Hilton” a mature man looks at his life now and compares it with his childhood. In a thoughtful and well-organized composition, compare and contrast the two viewpoints.
 
     
   Download a handout with more poems by John Ciardi.  

Your Turn: Even teenagers feel homesickness or nostalgia for the remembered past. Locate a photograph of a place that was special to you when you were younger, or sketch the place. Write your own reflection of how the place, the times, and you, too, have changed.

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Updated 15 January 2023.