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Seeing the Unseeable:
Poetry as a Bridge between Readers and Writers

Poetry has maintained its nature as a coveted form of language, removed from other styles of writing, because of the unique ways in which it functions. A successful poem is an interactive dialogue between the writer and the reader, and thus can be meaningful on many different levels, as it combines the experiences and perceptions of both parties. This interaction is achieved in the utilization of literary devices, such as tone, mood and imagery, which can transfer the reader into the very consciousness of the poet at the time the poem was written, and translate the unseeable abstractions of a poem into ideas that are more tangible.

In Maxine Kumin’s poem, Flying, many of the most important pieces of information within the work remain unsaid, or unseeable, and therefore abstract. The poem, which describes sexual abuse transcending generations of a family, never names the abuser directly. Instead, the poet embeds the identity of this abuser in the tone of the poem. This tone, though it shifts slightly from stanza to stanza, is one of isolated distance. “Every night your soul flies/ out of your body and into/God’s lap…Hearing this as a child haunted me./I couldn’t help sleeping” Such a removed tone compels the reader to wonder what is not being said and why such things have been omitted. Thus the removed sense of tone inspires interaction between poet and reader.

In this specific poem, one can infer that Kumin is leaving out the details of the speaker’s abuser to show not only the pattern of abuse across generations, but also to leave room for the reader to further connect to the poem. Establishing a strong tone of distance transports the reader to the same level, but by not pinpointing the details of the conflict the poet allows the reader to take that level further and fill in the blanks of the poems with ideas that stem from their own lives.

Other poets achieve this interaction between reader and writer through the mood of their poem, and the implications of this mood open the poem to the reader’s deduction. In On the Screened Porch by Elizabeth Biller Chapman, the mood opens the forum for dialogue between writer and reader. The poem is written in the voice of a woman enjoying a meal on the porch of her childhood home, still inhabited by her mother, fifty years later. The poem is a celebration of obstacles overcome, as it is evident the family was once less perfect than they appear to be now. The reflective and almost prideful mood of the poem is teased with wistful hints at a sorrowful time: “The garden not as it was, but lush, intensely green, the lawn’s near perfect.” The words “not as it was” contradict the otherwise upbeat mood of the poem, and prompt the reader to imagine the garden at a time where it served a contrast to its current well kept state.
When examining the words in their correspondence to the mood of the poem, the contradictions in language are often more subtle. “Suppertime. Corn, cooked—some milk/ in the water—always threatens to boil over.” The words “always threatens to boil over” take the reader off guard, forces him to recognize the contrast that occasional inconsistent phrases inflict on the entirety of the poem. That phrase inspires a sense of urgency in the reader that the reader must struggle to explain, since the poet herself offers little immediate assistance in that area. The reader’s personalized explanation serves a route of access to the poem’s otherwise abstract ideas. The mood of the poem, therefore, can connect the writer to the reader on a level otherwise inaccessible, and translates the poet’s vagueness into the reader’s imagination, allowing the reader to be a part of the poem in a way he could otherwise not.

In addition to tone and mood, imagery can serve as the literary bridge between reader and writer. In Sam Hamill’s Natural History, the poet describes one day of work with his daughter as an explanation for his feeling suspended between his father and daughter. The vivid depictions of the day’s activities lead up to abstractions that the reader can fill in.
We work in a silence broken only


by occasional banter. I wipe the cobwebs
from nooks and sills, working on my knees
as if this prayer of labor could save me,
as though the itch of fiberglass and sawdust
were an answer to some old incessant question
I never dare remember.

The imagery preceding the potential abstraction allows the reader to explore the “answer to some old incessant question” that would be otherwise inaccessible. The imagery serves as a visual then, on which the reader can balance layers of meaning, to turn the unseeable pieces of the poem to a tangible reality for the reader.

The imagery, like the mood and tone of the poem, transfers the reader into the consciousness of the poet at the time the poem was written, and allows the reader to interact with the poem in an explorative manner from that basis forth. If a poet wrote in a way that explained every angle of every answer to all of the questions raised in his poem, he would be more of a journalist, or an essayist, than a poet. Poetry is unique in that it relies on the reader to complete the poem, and the poem thrives on the interaction between writer and reader. It is only after the poem combines the perspectives of both the writer and the reader that it truly comes alive. There must therefore be a level of understanding beyond the literal level of the poem, the abstract level, on which the interaction can take place. The poet’s duty is thus to make the abstract accessible to the reader, and a poem is successful if it employs literary devices to transport the reader to the level of the writer. The discussed poems of Kumin, Chapman and Hamill are exemplary of this, as they all bridge writers to their readers by allowing the readers just enough space to draw their own conclusions. The poem, in this union, is complete.