What the Poem Doesn’t Say: A Deconstructive Reading of Modern Verse

This blog task is assigned by our professor, Dr. Dilip Barad Sir, as part of the unit “Derrida and Deconstruction.”

For the background reading, click here.

In a world where literature often seems to carry fixed meanings and timeless truths, poststructuralist theory invites us to pause, look closer, and ask: What if meaning is never stable? What if a text says more than it intends — or even the opposite?

This blog begins exactly at that point of inquiry. It is shaped by three guiding materials that provide both theory and practical demonstration. First, the short video "How to Deconstruct a Text: Sonnet 18 – Shall I Compare Thee?" introduces the basic principles of deconstruction by exploring Shakespeare’s iconic sonnet, showing how poetic language can both express and undermine itself.

Next, we move to Catherine Belsey’s Poststructuralism (pgs. 19–21), where she discusses “The primacy of the signifier” through two celebrated short poems: Ezra Pound’s In a Station of the Metro and William Carlos Williams’s The Red Wheelbarrow. Belsey’s close reading reveals how meaning emerges not from reference to real-world things, but from the play of language itself — sound, rhythm, and image.

Finally, drawing from Peter Barry’s Beginning Theory (pgs. 56–58), we explore what post-structuralist critics actually do. Barry offers a clear, three-step model of deconstruction — verbal, textual, and linguistic — using Dylan Thomas’s A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London as a rich example. This section illustrates how a poem’s apparent unity can unravel into contradictions, paradoxes, and multiple meanings when examined through a post-structuralist lens.

Through this blog, I aim to connect these texts and techniques, not only to explain the theory behind deconstruction, but to apply it in practice, showing how close reading under poststructuralism can radically transform our understanding of poetry.

Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

 Video : Deconstructive Reading of Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

1. The First Word “I” – Authority of the Speaker

• The poem opens with “Shall I...” – an assertion of subjective control.

• The speaker places himself at the center—as the one who defines beauty, decides comparison, and confers immortality.

• This is a clear act of linguistic hegemony—where the subjectivity of the speaker dominates the beloved, turning the beloved into a passive object of poetic gaze.

• Deconstruction challenges this hierarchy: Who gives the speaker such authority? Can language really define or eternalize a person?

2. Binary Opposition 1: Human Being (Beloved) vs. Nature (Summer’s Day)

• Nature is described as unreliable: “Rough winds,” “too hot,” “too short,” “declines.”

• The beloved is presented as more lovely and temperate.

• But: Is this really true? Or is it just the speaker’s constructed version?

• Deconstruction collapses the binary—the poem depends on nature to describe the beloved. So, it can’t fully separate the two.

• Paradox: To praise the beloved beyond nature, the poem must rely on nature’s language.

3. Binary Opposition 2: Beloved (Real Body) vs. Lines (Poetic Writing)

• Lines: “When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st”

• Poem claims to immortalize the beloved, but in doing so, it replaces her physical body with poetic lines.

• The real person disappears—only a linguistic version remains.

• Thus, the beloved is no longer real, but a symbol—subject to free play of interpretation.

4. Free Play and Instability of Meaning

• Words like “fair,” “temperate,” “eternal,” and “declines” are not fixed in meaning.

• “Fair” can mean beautiful, equal, or temporary.

• “Temperate” could suggest moderation, but also dullness.

• These words slide in meaning, leading to free play.

• The beloved’s beauty is said to be eternal, but it exists only in the poem, which depends on readers, language, and time—all of which are unstable.

• Therefore, the poem undermines its own claim of permanence.

5. Undecidability of the Poem’s Meaning

• Is this poem truly about love?

• Or is it a celebration of poetic power, ego, and authorship?

• The poem seems to say:

• “I have made you eternal.”

• But eternity is dependent on the survival of language, and the reader’s act of reading.

• Hence, the poem becomes self-referential—about its own writing, not about the beloved.

6. Hegemony of the Writer / Power over Time and Death

Lines like:

• “Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade”

• suggest that the poet defeats death with writing.

• But death and time are natural, while the poem is constructed.

• So who really has power—language or nature?

• The poem appears hegemonic—language is shown to dominate nature, time, even death—but deconstruction questions this claim.

• Language is not stable, and therefore, cannot claim true dominance.

7. Subjectivity Constructed through Language

• The speaker constructs the beloved entirely through metaphors, comparisons, and similes.

• The real identity of the beloved is lost—what remains is only a textual image.

• Thus, the beloved is not a subject, but a signifier within the poet’s language system.

• Deconstruction reveals that the poem is about the poet’s desire to control meaning, not about love.

8. “This” Gives Life – Circular Meaning

Last lines:

• “So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

• What is “this”? The poem? The language? The metaphor?

• It’s unclear. The line becomes circular:

The poem gives life to the beloved, but the beloved is the reason for the poem.

• So the origin of meaning becomes undecidable—does the poem depend on the beloved, or does the beloved depend on the poem?

Classical Reading	Deconstructive Reading
Eternal love poem that immortalizes the beloved	Poem shows illusion of immortality—it’s self-referential, not romantic
Poet praises beloved	Poet praises his own poetic power
Language is stable and meaningful	Language is unstable, full of free play and contradictions
Nature is inferior to human beauty	Nature is used to define beauty, so the binary collapses
Beloved is eternal in the poem	The real person disappears, replaced by textual subjectivity

Poem : 2 : ‘On a Station in the Metro’ by Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

This is a classic Imagist poem — brief, visual, and metaphorically intense.

Key Concepts Explained:

1. Primacy of the Signifier:

• In literary theory (especially poststructuralism), a signifier is the word or symbol, while the signified is the thing or concept it refers to.

• In this poem, the signifiers ("faces", "petals", "bough", "apparition") don’t simply point to real things in the world — instead, they create an emotional and aesthetic experience through language itself.

• The poem separates these images from their real-world context and elevates the symbolic, sensual associations they produce.

So instead of just saying “I saw people at the station,” Pound gives us something deeper and more affective: the ghostly beauty of people’s faces momentarily appearing like petals on a branch — both fleeting and delicate.

2. Visual & Associative Meaning:

• The faces and petals may refer to real things — but their impact lies in how they are made to resemble each other through the structure of the poem.

• The connection between faces in a crowd and petals on a bough is not logical; it’s poetic.

• This analogy isn’t about literal resemblance, but about the emotional response it provokes: the fragility, transience, and beauty of life in a busy, urban world.

The poem invites the reader to fill in the space between the lines — to create the meaning through association, not explanation.

3. Isolation and Poetic Effect:

• The two lines are visually separated on the page — this layout adds meaning.

• The white space around them mirrors the fleeting, ghostly quality of the “apparition”.

• The reader is asked to concentrate on the words themselves, and how they sound and feel, not just what they represent.

4. Rhythm and Sound:

• The poem also sounds musical:

• "Crowd" and "bough" almost rhyme.
• “Petals” and “wet” share soft consonants.

The sound of the poem adds an emotional layer, beyond meaning — this is what Julia Kristeva calls the semiotic.

5. Julia Kristeva’s ‘Semiotic’:

• Kristeva introduces the idea of the semiotic, a form of meaning-making not based on clear definitions, but on sound, rhythm, and feeling.

• It’s like the babbling of a child, rich with emotional force even before actual language is used.

• In this poem, the semiotic power lies in the haunting rhythm, evocative sounds, and suggestive images — it stirs something before we even try to understand it logically.

 Interpretation of the Poem in This Framework:

“The apparition of these faces in the crowd”

Suggests a fleeting ghost-like image — people glimpsed briefly, emotionally resonant but not clearly seen.

“Petals on a wet, black bough”

Suggests softness and fragility against a dark, harsh background — evoking beauty in a fleeting, unexpected moment.

The two images are connected not just in meaning, but through form, placement, sound, and emotion. This connection is created by the poem, not derived from the real world.

Final Thought:

This analysis emphasizes that poetry does not work like everyday language. It isn’t trying to describe a fact but to generate a feeling, a mood, or a realization. Through the primacy of the signifier, sound, and image, Ezra Pound’s two-line poem becomes a powerful meditation on the momentary beauty of human life, using language not to name reality, but to transform it.

Poem : 3 : William Carlos Williams: “The Red Wheelbarrow”

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

Surface Meaning:

At first glance, this seems like a very simple and straightforward poem:

• It names everyday farm objects: a red wheelbarrow, rainwater, white chickens.

• It describes things in a clear, visual way — almost like a still photograph.

• It starts with a strong claim: "so much depends upon" this very ordinary scene.

So, the first impression is: the poem is emphasizing the importance of ordinary, material things. Real objects. Real colors. Real rain.

But... a Deeper Reading Suggests Something Else:

1. Is this really about real things?

• The red and white colors are very pure and bright — almost too perfect to be from a real, muddy farm.

• The wheelbarrow is “glazed with rain water” — this gives it a shiny, almost polished appearance, like a toy or a painting, not a dirty tool from a barn.

So maybe it’s not a realistic farmyard, but a carefully constructed image — like from a children’s picture book or a dreamlike memory.

2. Language, not Reality:

• The poem doesn't compare things or explain anything.

• It just places words (or signifiers) carefully on the page — each word or phrase in its own line.

• The structure and sound of the poem (the rhythm and pattern) are simple, repetitive, almost like a nursery rhyme.

This tells us: the poem is not just describing a real thing — it’s using language and form to create a certain feeling of calmness, innocence, and purity.

Meaning from the Words, Not the World:

The poem isn’t showing us a literal farm — it’s creating a mood, a mental image, a state of mind through words.

• It’s about how language itself can make us see or feel something.

• The "so much depends upon" could refer to how we interpret and imagine the scene, not the objects themselves.

Final Understanding:

This poem looks extremely simple — but it actually asks us to think about how poetry works:

• Do words point to real things?

• Or do they create their own little world through rhythm, image, and sound?

"The Red Wheelbarrow", just like Pound’s poem, reminds us that in poetry, language doesn’t just describe reality — it can reshape it.

Poem : 4: A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London by Dylan Thomas

Never until the mankind making

Bird beast and flower

Fathering and all humbling darkness

Tells with silence the last light breaking

And the still hour

Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round

Zion of the water bead

And the synagogue of the ear of corn

Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound

Or sow my salt seed

In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child's death.

I shall not murder

The mankind of her going with a grave truth

Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath

With any further

Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,

Robed in the long friends,

The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,

Secret by the unmourning water

Of the riding Thames.

After the first death, there is no other.

PART 1: What Is Post-Structuralism and Deconstruction?

Post-structuralist critics (especially deconstructionists) believe that: Language is not stable.

Words don't always clearly point to a single, fixed meaning. A poem may say one thing on the surface but suggest the opposite underneath.

What Structuralists vs. Post-Structuralists Do:

Structuralists	Post-Structuralists
Look for patterns, symmetry, and unity in a text	Look for contradictions, paradoxes, and confusion
Seek order and balance	Seek breaks, shifts, or contradictions
Aim to show coherence	Aim to show how the text contains disunity or instability
Find repetitions and reflections	Find absences, gaps, and disruptions
Focus on what the text says	Focus on what the text hides or contradicts

Post-Structuralist / Deconstructionist Toolkit

Deconstructionists follow three main stages:

1. Verbal Stage

Look closely at individual words or phrases and point out contradictions, double meanings, or logical paradoxes.

Example: If a poem says “the first death, there is no other”, it contradicts itself — the phrase “first” implies there will be a second!

2. Textual Stage

Look at bigger shifts in the poem: changes in tone, perspective, time, or grammar. These are called "fault-lines", and they show the poem is not as stable or unified as it might seem.

Does the speaker suddenly shift from past to present, or from personal to general? That’s a sign of internal contradiction.

3. Linguistic Stage

Look at language itself and how the poem struggles to express what it says it will not — or cannot — say.

For example, if a poem says "I won’t mourn" but then writes 20 lines that are clearly mourning — it shows how language can betray intention.

PART 2: Applying This to Dylan Thomas's Poem

“A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London”

Here’s how we apply post-structuralist analysis to this specific poem.

1. Verbal Stage – Contradictions in Words

Line: “After the first death, there is no other”

• On the surface, it suggests death is final and sacred.
• But “first” implies there could be a second death — so the phrase contradicts itself.
• This contradiction shows how language slips and creates confusion, even when trying to sound final or absolute.

Another example:

“I shall not murder / The mankind of her going with a grave truth”

• Here, the speaker condemns conventional mourning, calling it “murder.”
• But then continues to speak in poetic, ceremonial language — doing exactly what he claimed he wouldn’t.

2. Textual Stage – Shifts and Discontinuities

• The first two stanzas are cosmic, timeless — they speak of nature, creation, and deep time.

• Then the third stanza suddenly zooms in on the child’s specific death — the “majesty and burning of the child's death.”

• Finally, the fourth stanza becomes grand and symbolic again, calling her “London’s daughter.”

These shifts in time, tone, and focus prevent the poem from having one consistent voice or message. It’s unstable, even if it looks beautiful on the surface.

3. Linguistic Stage – Problems with Language

• Thomas says he will not mourn, yet the entire poem is a deeply emotional tribute — he is mourning.

• He avoids direct emotional language, but still creates an atmosphere of grief and awe.

• He tries to resist traditional metaphors (grave, mourning), but then uses elevated religious language: “robed in the long friends, / The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother.”

This shows how language forces the speaker into the very expressions he tries to escape. The poem reveals that we cannot fully escape the limits of language — even when we try.

Summary: What This Means for the Poem

“A Refusal to Mourn…” looks like a noble, spiritual rejection of grief — but under deconstruction, it’s full of contradictions.

• It says it won’t mourn, but does.

• It shifts perspective from the universal to the personal.

• It uses metaphor while claiming to resist it.

• It shows that language is both powerful and unstable — we can’t fully trust it to deliver fixed meanings.

Final Thought:

Deconstruction isn’t about saying “this poem is wrong.” It’s about asking deeper questions:

• Where does the poem contradict itself?

• What does it try to say but fail to hold together?

• What hidden meanings are revealed when we “read it against itself”?

REFERENCES: 

Barad, Dilip. Deconstructive Analysis of Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" and William Carlos Williams's "The Red Wheelbarrow." ResearchGate, July 2024, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381943844_Deconstructive_Analysis_of_Ezra_Pound's_'In_a_Station_of_the_Metro'_and_William_Carlos_Williams's_'The_Red_Wheelbarrow'.

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. 3rd ed., Viva Books Private Limited, 2010.

Belsey, Catherine. Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction. OUP Oxford, 2002.