In these lines from “The Geologist,” by Michael Blumenthal, the nouns are in bold.

Identify each as concrete or abstract.

He had made a life of stone:

of sandstone and basalt,
of dolomite and shale
and the wild permutations of schist* crystalline rocks, easily split
Siltstones spoke to him
and the hard crystals of metaphorphic rock:
His life became a history
Of sediments and erosions,
Of deep strata fissured and faulted
Into a great transmutation* transformation, change
Of flakes and embering chips.
Nights, he spoke in his sleep
of downcutting rivers,
primordial sea floors
crumpled and forced into islands,
only to resubmerge as wandering continents.
He could see the veins of magma
shooting up through the mountain ranges,
he could feel the great unconformities,
the missing pages and sentences
of subsidences and disatems* sinking, settling; gaps or spaces
All that he loved of the world
was stone and water, water and wind,
Cambrian and Paleozoic. But he was not,
a stupid man, by any stretch
of the imagination. For he never mistook
pyrite* for true gold. He was not fool enough a common yellow mineral, fool’s gold
ever to take gneiss* for granite. a layered rock

7
Using the form of the poem “The Geologist,” write a poem about another profession,
filling in the blanks with concrete or abstract nouns. Experiment with the effect of using
different categories of nouns in different places.

“The ________________________”

He made a life of ____________________:

of _______________________ and ______________________,
of _______________________ and ______________________
and the wild __________________________ spoke to him.
His/Her life became a history
of __________________________ and __________________________
of deep ____________________, _____________________ and ___________________
into a great __________________________
of ___________________________ and _________________________.
Nights, he/she spoke in his/her sleep
of _______________________ and ________________________.
He/she could see the _________________________ of ________________________
shooting up from the ___________________________,
he could feel the great _________________________,
the missing ____________________________ and __________________________.
All that he/she loved of the world
was _________________________ and _______________________,
__________________________ and __________________________.
But he/she was not a _________________________, by any stretch
of the imagination. For he/she never mistook
________________________ for _____________________. He/she was not fool enough
ever to take _________________________ for ________________________.