The Writer

The poem opens with the beginning of an extended metaphor: “In her room at the prow of the house” (Line 1). This creates the image of the suburban house (“the windows are tossed with linden” [Line 2]) as a symbolic ship, as well as establishing a narrative voice that is rich in figurative language. While the two opening lines are quite rhythmic, the third line is concise and matter of fact: “My daughter is writing a story” (Line 3). This creates a juxtaposition between the extraordinary and the everyday.

In the second stanza, the focus of the poem moves from the unseen daughter to the speaker. This moment reveals that the events of the first stanza are “off stage” while the poem’s speaker listens behind a closed door. He continues to view his daughter’s foray into creativity through the lens of a ship: The sound of the typewriter becomes “a chain hauled over a gunwale” (Lines 6), while her limited experiences from which to draw inspiration become “great cargo, and some of it heavy” (Line 8). These images combine to create a launching point in the girl’s journey; this is the moment she is sailing away toward new lands.

In the fourth stanza, the poem reaches its first turning point as the daughter pauses to consider a new direction, and the father pauses to assess his preconceptions. He starts to realize that the journey his daughter is taking is not quite the one he expected. The sound of her stopping and starting to write reminds the narrator of a memory in which a starling was trapped inside the girl’s bedroom, looking for a way out.

On a conscious level, the connection is made because of the way the daughter is struggling to voice her ideas in just the right way. Like the starling, the ideas circle around in her mind needlessly. The speaker uses vivid imagery to describe the bird: “sleek, wild,” “iridescent” (Lines 21, 22); these are all words that could also be applied to the young girl, as well as the fragile potential of creative inspiration. After each unsuccessful attempt at freedom, the bird lies “humped and bloody” (Line 25); the image echoes the girl’s posture as she leans over the typewriter, coaxing words onto the page.

When the starling finally does find its way out, it is not by accident: “[O]ur spirits / Rose when, suddenly sure, / It lifted” (Lines 26-28). The bird taps into some instinct deep inside itself for the outside world; a new awareness slips into place. This is the same process the young girl is going through when she moves from silence into the clattering of keys. On a broader level, this metaphor represents her own entrapment within the room and the limitations of her age, her reliance on her home; through this memory, the speaker realizes that soon she, too, will fly from her home to discover new things.

This idea is hinted at in the final stanza, when the speaker says, “It is always a matter, my darling, / Of life or death, as I had forgotten” (Lines 31-32). For the bird, escaping the confined space was a literal necessity to survive; for the girl, freeing herself from the confines of childhood becomes a matter of embracing life in all its messiness and intensity. The speaker wishes “What I wished you before” (Lines 33), alluding to his earlier blessing of “a lucky passage” (Line 9). By the end of the poem, however, he has realized that the “passage” (Line 9) through life is much greater and broader and more permanent than a simple composition, and that he can only wish her well as she embarks on it alone.