154 Poetry for Students

Lines 11-15:

In these four lines, Graham introduces an im-

portant motif in the poem, the motif of language

and the open air. The freedom of the air (and of

language) is contrasted to the cramped, confined

space of the hiding place. She also returns to de-

scriptions of the world outside the hiding place in

an attempt to create alternate, but equally stark re-

alities.

Lines 16-19:

In this stanza, Graham explains how the gov-

ernment secret police would round up student pro-

testers. Again, she subtly lets the reader know that

she was one of the people the police captured, and

again, she focuses the reader’s gaze away from the

students and toward the fire, where the man’s voice

might be. Like a camera in a movie, the reader’s

eye is always being drawn from one scene to an-

other.

Lines 20-28:

The poem takes a dramatic turn in the next few

stanzas. Engaging in what poet Carolyn Forche

would call a “poetry of witness,” Graham describes

some of the horrors of the cell into which she and

the others found themselves squeezed. While deftly

avoiding melodrama, the poet gives a stark account

of people urinating and vomiting in the cell, as

though the poem has turned into a documentary

film. The most disturbing account tells of a po-

liceman repeatedly striking the belly of a pregnant

woman with a stick. These stanzas represent an

usually realistic tone for Graham; thus, the cir-

cumstances seem particularly dire, lending the

poem a rather remarkable tension.

Lines 29-34:

In yet another abrupt shift, the poet poses a

shocking question to both herself and the audience:

are the memories she’s just recounted real, or did

she make them up? In a classic postmodern ges-

ture, Graham calls the certainty of memory and per-

sonal observation into question. She has a visual

image of the cell, but is it an image she saw in a

photograph? A common feature of postmodernism

is the questioning of knowledge and the realization

that there can never be one, singular truth. Here,

Graham has no idea what is “true.”

Lines 35-43:

Once more, the poet quickly jerks the reader

back to the reality of the uprisings. It is difficult to

tell whether or not events are imagined or are be-

ing reported. Either way, the poem turns from pos-

ing questions about truth to a descripton of the city

after someone is released from jail. The motif of

the open air recurs: space, openness, freedom

seems to be squeezing out absence just as the bod-

ies in the cell squeezed space out of the jail. Gra-

ham notes the sky seems to light up, perhaps re-

ferring to a fire lighting the dark Parisian sky.

Lines 42-47:

The poet muses on the theme of emptiness.

What does someone find in the air once they are

released from prison? Graham connects this kind

of seemingly impossible searching with the student

demonstrations: the question, “What were we

meant to find?” becomes loaded with suggestion.

Lines 48-51:

Though there is no stanza break, there is a

break in the flow of the poem. The shifts are be-

coming even more abrupt. The reader is transported

now back to the poet’s room, a rented room, where

she sits, watching the exchange of inside and out-

side air. The notion of insides and outsides becomes

yet another theme in the poem: is she an insider,

or an outsider?

The Hiding Place

Media

Adaptations

• In 1991, Watershed Tapes out of Washington
  D.C. released an audiotape of Graham reading
  “The Hiding Place” and other poems.


• Graham reading her poem San Sepolcro and
  links to three other web sites featuring her work
  is available at the excellent Academy of Amer-
  ican Poets, Jorie Graham exhibit, http://
  http://www.poets.org/lit/poet/jgrahfst.htm (June 22,
  2000).


• Graham’s collection of poems, Region of Un-
  likeness(1991), in which “The Hiding Place”
  appears, is an elegant, intellectual, and histori-
  cal exploration of how personal visions and ex-
  perience meshes with the sweep of history.