162 Poetry for Students

capture God, because there exists nothing on the

earth that can be compared with Him. “To whom

then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the

Holy One,” Graham quotes, from the Book of Isa-

iah (40:25).

Source:Greg Barnhisel, in an essay for Poetry for Students,

Gale, 2001.

Pamela Steed Hill

Pamela Steed Hill has had poems published in

over 100 journals and has been nominated for a

Pushcart Prize three times. Her first collection, In

Praise of Motels,was published in 1999 by Blair

Mountain Press. She is an associate editor for Uni-

versity Communications at Ohio State University.

In this essay, Hill examines the use of images of

light and fire, which make us question whether

there really is a place to “hide.”

One can read Jorie Graham’s poem “The Hid-

ing Place” and comprehend its general meaning and

sentiment without knowing the specific historical

reference on which this work is based. It takes place

in Paris in 1968, and it involves that turbulent time

of student unrest and labor strikes. But a more thor-

ough knowledge of the actual events that occurred

during the “May 1968 revolution” in France en-

hances the understanding of the historical perspec-

tive and the ironies that Graham relies on in the

poem.

The decade of the 1960s was a time of social

upheaval all over the world. Young people, espe-

cially, wanted to bring about a change in practices

and values not only social, but political, economic,

and moral as well. While revolts against govern-

ments have been around since government itself,

the rebellion that occurred in the universities and

factories in France during the spring of 1968 was

the first time a western capitalist government was

nearly toppled by a mixture of organized revolu-

tion and outright anarchy. The Sorbonne, one of the

world’s most renowned universities, founded as a

theology college in 1253, was at the heart of the

uprising, and Jorie Graham was a seventeen-year-

old high school graduate living in Paris at the time.

Graham was born in the United States but

spent her first 17 years in both Italy and France.

During the 1960s, working class citizens in France

(and elsewhere) became more vocal about the in-

justices they felt they were suffering at the hands

of a bourgeois government and unsympathetic

management. University students took up the cause

of the workers, as well as that of international stu-

dents and workers who were supposedly treated

even more unfairly than the French. As opinions,

arguments, and tempers intensified, so did actions.

In May 1968, a series of violent clashes between

students and workers on one side and police and

government forces on the other began to occur on

a daily basis. The Sorbonne (and other schools) and

several factories were taken over and occupied by

students and workers. Unsympathetic university of-

ficials and factory managers were locked out. In re-

sponse, French Prime Minister Charles De Gaulle

sent in the police and the ACRS, the government

police, to oust the rebels and restore the status quo.

In the end, that is what occurred, but “The Hiding

Place” presents a first-hand account of the violence

and degradation that many suffered throughout the

ordeal.

The major irony in this poem is the title itself.

In the first line, the speaker states that the last time

she saw “it [the hiding place] was 1968.” After that,

it is never mentioned again and it is unclear where

The Hiding Place

What

Do I Read

Next?

• Graham collected her best poems from her first
  five collections in The Dream of the Unified
  Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994(1995). Win-
  ner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, this book
  gives an excellent overview of Graham’s poetry.


• Graham’s introduction to The Best American
  Poetry 1990(1991) is a well-articulated state-
  ment of what she thinks contemporary Ameri-
  can poetry should do and be.


• Poet, journalist and anarchist Angelo Quattroc-
  chi was posted in France in 1968 and captures
  the tensions of the student uprisings in Begin-
  ning of the End: France, May 1968.


• Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton An-
  thology (1994) is the most comprehensive col-
  lection of Postmodern poetry in print. A helpful
  introduction and an immense menu of poets of-
  fers a panorama of perspectives on postmod-
  ernist verse.