Subject C, the Numinous, and Ellen Bass’s ‘Gate C-22’

originally published in Vox Populi

“The supreme quality of beauty being a light from another world,” 

Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

One of my first teachers, Danusha Laméris, would often look at a poem and say something to the effect of  “I see your subject A, but what’s your subject B? By this she meant it was clear what the poem was about, the story, plot, whatever the speaker wanted to get off her chest—that was subject A, but subject B might be loosely defined as the theme of the poem, the insight on life embedded and implied. Subject B is related to discovery, what the poet didn’t know when she started to write. Subject B is often found in the poem’s volta, when the poet elaborates on her initial thought. 

For example, in Ellen Bass’s famous poem “Gate C22,” the speaker narrates a deceptively pedestrian scene. A middle-aged, ordinary-looking couple reunites in an airport. Everyone watches them kiss. That’s subject A; Subject B, however, studies the depth and beauty of unconditional love, how, no matter what happens, whatever one’s appearance or age, unconditional love is universal, real, and felt, like the ecstatic love of a mother for a newborn. The fact that all the travelers cannot look away is evidence that everyone admires and desires that kind of love. Indeed, the appreciation for abiding love might partly be the reason for the viral popularity of “Gate C22.”  Everyone wishes they were that woman being kissed, in her “middle-aged body,/her plaid Bermuda shorts, /sleeveless blouse, glasses,/little gold hoop earrings.” All of us want to tilt our heads up, as she does, and experience a higher love. 

As is often the case, when the poem changes its linguistic style—in this case from narrative to extended metaphor in the third stanza—it turns toward its subject B discovery:

…But the best part was his face. When he drew back

and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost

as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,

as your mother must have looked at you, no matter

what happened after—if she beat you or left you or

you’re lonely now—you once lay there, the vernix

not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you

as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth…

Recently, as I discussed Subject A and B, my friend and fellow poet, Addie Mahmassami, shrugged her shoulders and said, “What about subject C?” The two of us had been listening to podcasts about telepathy and Carl Jung’s principles of the collective unconscious. While Subject A in a poem might be the concrete dimension of the poem and Subject B, the affective discovery, Subject C dips into what Jung called the collective unconscious, a universal reservoir of psychic energy and shared human experiences—curated over millennia of evolution—where myths, archetypes, images, and symbols are stored (Editors of Britannica). In short, Subject C is the numinous, an ineffable experience of divine revelation and transcendence (Mehrtens). Subject C cannot be verbalized, but we feel it as a hush, a recognition of revelatory depth. Subject A is shown or told. Subject B is understood. Subject C is transmitted. 

“Gate C22,” despite the seemingly pedestrian narrative about air travel, contains elements of the numinous Subject C. The subtle elements of the mythic, like an extended dream or NDE, conspire to take the reader into an archetypal realm of transcendence. Consider the description of the couple when they greet each other at the gate:

…the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other

like he’d just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,

like she’d been released at last from ICU, snapped

out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down

from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing…

This description evokes a mythic reunion: the prodigal son with his father, Isis with Osiris, Dorothy embracing Auntie Em; Odysseus, finally, in his tree-hewn bed with Penelope. Although “Gate C22” is not a harrowing poem, implicit in the reunion is separation, loss, and return, better known as the hero’s journey. In Bass's poem, the description of reunion is further heightened with its reference to the deathly experience of a coma, a kind of journey to hell. The reference to Annapurna not only evokes the pilgrim’s journey up a god-like, treacherous mountain, but also the Hindu goddess Annapurna. The return home is an archetype, but more than that, it is an integration of lost parts of the Self. When we read this, it resonates with a deep, barely recognized, ancient experience—one shared with our human ancestors and with our animal family—the experience of brokenness and healing. 

Bass does not stop there, however, she continues to conjure the numinous, delving even further into our genesis—both as individuals and as part of our shared evolution. She evokes birth when “someone gazed at you/as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth,” an experience deeply embedded in both our personal and collective unconscious. What creature, what ancestor, experienced the “first sunrise seen from the Earth?” Whatever or whoever, our blood-memories are stirred by feeling, for the first time, awe for the ultimate light-giver—the god-like sun. 

This three-fold system is not unique to poetry. Twelve-step programs, inspired, in part, by both Jung’s teaching (Jones) and the co-founder’s ingestion of LSD (M), views recovery from addiction as healing on three levels: mental, emotional, and spiritual. These three aspects might further represent the human mind, which, in a complex interplay, operates a rational prefrontal cortex; the limbic system which governs emotions; and the lower parts of our brain where collective generational, biological, and evolutionary impulses are unconsciously stored. Although areas of the brain have predominant functions, much of the  brain is connected and communicating as it exercises these functions (“The Brain”). 

Language, diction, syntax, and craft also operate on Subject A, B, and C levels, both separately and at the same time. Consider the title, “Gate C22.” It is specific: a name, a label, a quantifiable number—the epitome of Subject A. An airport gate, in general, is also the appropriate setting for emotional reunions and departures, a Subject B playing field. On a third level, a gate or a door is also a symbol, ancient and resonant, that speaks of change, loss, discovery, and reconnection. In many myths and fairy tales, there is a portal the hero must pass through, often with a “gatekeeper” of some sort. Indeed, we pass through a sort of gate at the beginning and end of our lives, and pass through many doors along the way. A couple at a wedding, for example, will often stand beneath an arch, symbolizing their movement into a cleaved future. It might be said, with Shakespeare being a prime example, that when the power of the three Subjects is adeptly wielded, the result is not only appealing, but a candidate for the canon. 

A brief look at “Gate C22,” once again, allows an opportunity to note how elements of craft work on these different levels. The poem begins firmly in the known—a specific, vivid narrative, oriented in space and time. Indeed the title and first lines in this poem are a primer in orienting the reader to a world that seems anything but numinous, overly emotional, or woo woo:

At gate C22 in the Portland airport

a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed

a woman arriving from Orange County.

They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after

the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons

and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,

the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other…

Sound and specific detail are evoked as the “the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons/and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking.” Vivid, well-observed, sensory aspects of daily life—always an effective hack to evoke the physical world while effectively creating a portal to an abstract one.

With the humble transition “But,” the turn into the emotions of subject B is then evoked with Bass’s super-power, the luminous extended metaphor: 

…But they kissed lavish

kisses like the ocean in the early morning,

the way it gathers and swells, sucking

each rock under, swallowing it

again and again…

Still, this image also moves us toward Subject C when it evokes the ocean, a symbol for the unknown and endless, home of Melville's great white whale, the object of Ahab’s devout obsession. The ocean is, it might be argued, our mother, and these lovers are returning to the lost and deepest connection. Moreover, they are sucked into it, and so are we as we watch: everyone, no matter who, can’t help but desire such a profound coupling:

…We were all watching—

passengers waiting for the delayed flight

to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,

the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling

sunglasses. We couldn’t look away. We could

taste the kisses crushed in our mouths….

In this description the three levels are integrated: the specific, narrative detail in the list of watchers is pure Subject A, as is the bit of exposition, “We couldn’t look away.” The metaphoric and sensory image, “We could taste the kisses crushed in our mouths” evokes the emotional subject B, while the communal trance that everyone has fallen into evokes Subject C. We are mesmerized, altered, drawn to the mythic energy of love, the power of return, and the reintegration of the split Self. 

Another way to understand these three levels might be to consider what we know and do not know. We know we have a story, phrase, or idea we wish to write, Subject A, which comes from our conscious mind, our thoughts, and our ego. Then there is the part we discover as we write, which comes from our unconscious—Subject B— elusive, but capturable. Then there is the mystery beneath in the collective unconscious, Subject C, numinous and inexpressible, transmitted with symbolic forms. Through archetypes, the experiential meaning of Subject A and B is felt and understood on a psychic level.  Consider, again, these lines in Gate C22:

….as your mother must have looked at you, no matter

what happened after—if she beat you or left you or

you’re lonely now—you once lay there, the vernix

not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you

as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth…  

On reading those lines, which evokes a classic Madonna with Child image, anyone who has a problematic relationship with a parent will feel a spontaneously-deepened understanding of the parent-child bond. It is as if the reader, paradoxically, is once again a newborn, feeling a (perhaps lost) love, but simultaneously, the time-tempered adult who knows what has happened, and what will continue to happen—life’s epic trials. The conscious mind of Subject A is integrated and returned to the paradoxical longing and love of the numinous Subject C. This is the magic of the lyric moment. Time warps. The past meets the present meets the future. A connection is made with every human—maybe every being—who has ever lived. This is the deep dive into the numinous, an experience that is necessary to give meaning to our lives, something we crave, something as necessary as food, sex, or any other desire, which explains the universal persistence of art, religion, spirituality, and superstition (Piedmont).

As a practical matter, the apprehension of these three levels helps the writer move through the poem, where the ultimate questions are often, “What does the poem want?” Where is the poem leading me?  When we begin a poem, we think the initial Subject A situation, narrative, idea, or prompt is pushing us. But it might be more helpful to think of the unknown Subject C as pulling us, and like the teenager in a horror movie, unable to resist the basement, we are unable to resist the suppressed power of the Self. 

The next practical question is, “How do I let myself go to Subject C, especially if it might feel scary?” The answer to that, I think, beyond being aware of the existence of Subject C, is to be a disciple of the numinous, which means to have, in the best sense, discipline. Discipline means to practice the ancient, curated elements of poetry: writing in form, bringing in music, details, repetition, rhyme, metaphor, symbol, to seek out both obscure traditions and compelling innovation. 

Passing these tools through Subject A thoughts and ego is creative alchemy leading to Subject C gold.  As the word implies, “craft” contains and carries forward the immensity of Subjects A- C. Elements of craft are the friendly guides on the journey, our Virgils, bringing us through the fire, the purging, and finally, if we’re lucky, to Paradiso, the pure pleasure of the numinous poem, which, in the final analysis, might contain our personal myths, successful in the way myths are successful, in their transmission of complexity, magic, and the paradoxes of this painfully-beautiful world.

Works Cited

"The Brain." Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, 25 Jan. 2025, my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/22638-brain. June 2025

Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "collective unconscious." Encyclopedia Britannica, 3 Apr. 2025, https://www.britannica.com. June 2025.

Jones, Josh. "How Carl Jung Inspired the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous." Open Culture, Open Culture, 19 June 2024, openculture.com. June 2025.

M, Dan. "A.A. History: Bill W. and LSD." East Bay Intergroup of Alcoholics Anonymous, AA Groups of the Bay Area, eastbayaa.org. June 2025

Mehrtens, Susan. "Jung and the Numinosum." Jungian Center, edited by Susan Mehrtens, Jungian Center for the Spiritual Sciences, Mar. 2010. https://jungiancenter.org/jung-and-the-numinosum.June 2025 

 Piedmont, Ralph L., and Jesse Fox. "Hope and the Numinous: Psychological Concepts for Promoting Wellness in a Medical Context." ResearchGate, Medical Research Archives , 1 Nov. 2023, researchgate.com. June 2025