A Speaker Gives Themselves Away
IntroducedIn a poem there is often only the voice
- A short poem may have no plot, no named characters and no described setting.
- What it always has is somebody speaking.
- So the evidence about that speaker has to come from the speaking itself.
A poem may have no street address or cast list, but somebody has already taken the microphone.
Five channels, all in the words
- Characters reveal their perspectives and biases through the words they use, the details they provide, the organization of their thinking, the decisions they make and the actions they take.
- Three of the five are available even when nothing happens.
- That is what makes the list usable on a poem.
Select all the channels through which characters reveal perspective and bias.
Decisions and actions complete the list; the publication date is outside the text.
The details they provide
- A speaker describing a room chooses which four objects to mention out of forty.
- The four are evidence about the speaker before they are evidence about the room.
- Ask what a different speaker would have noticed instead.
Which channel is this evidence?
Sort each observation by the channel the CED names.
What a speaker leaves out cannot be used as evidence.
The obvious detail another speaker would have mentioned is where a bias usually shows.
A speaker who names four objects out of forty has given evidence primarily about...
The selection is a choice, and choices belong to whoever made them.
A speaker's silence is evidence too. What a voice does not mention — the obvious detail any other speaker would have reached for — is as analysable as what it does, and it is where a bias usually shows.
The ____ of a speaker's thinking is evidence even when every sentence is true.
A speaker who begins with an excuse has told you what they expect to be accused of.
The organization of their thinking
- Which idea did the speaker put first? What did they return to? Where did they stop?
- A speaker who begins with an excuse has told you what they expect to be accused of.
- Order of thought is evidence even when every sentence is true.
Match each question to the channel it opens.
Three questions you can ask of a poem in which nothing happens.
A speaker pass on a poem
- List the words that could have been ordinary and are not.
- List what the speaker mentions, and one obvious thing they do not.
- Then say what perspective makes all of that consistent.
A speaker describing a funeral names the weather, the flowers and the length of the service, and never once the dead person. Nothing said is false; the organization of the thinking has kept the subject out, and that avoidance is the poem.
A speaker reveals perspective and biases through the words they use, the details they provide, the organization of their thinking, their decisions and their actions — and the first three work on a poem where nothing happens. What is left out is evidence too.