Here on The Slam, every word is subject to critique.  We analyze adjectives, we scrutinize synonyms, we measure up metaphors.  But what about the rest of a poem or story -- the words that go unsaid, but are crucial just the same? Henry David Thoreau argued that unvoiced emotions could have as much impact as any spoken words: "The kindness I have longest remembered has been of this sort," he once noted, "the sort unsaid; so far beyond the speaker's lips that almost it already lay in my heart."  The things that are never directly communicated are sometimes the most important parts of a story or a poem -- the parts, as Thoreau says, that are almost already in the heart, and don't need to be stated explicitly. But sometimes it takes just as much writing skill to leave these things unsaid as it does to say them.

Enter Scarlett from Los Angeles, author of this month's beautiful poem "i forgot."  Scarlett is a master of jumping right into a story, leaving out any superfluous exposition.  As we begin to read her poem, we have very little context to go on… but by starting in media res and leaving all but the most crucial details unsaid, Scarlett creates a piece that is refreshing in its directness and universally relevant in the emotions it conveys.

First, there is the plant.  In the opening line, it is simply "the plant," and it remains simply "the plant" for the entire poem.  OK, we do get one adjective to work with: "tiny."  And Scarlett reveals that it is potted in a "frail green vase."  But what kind of plant is it?  Does it have flowers, leaves, thorns?  Where does it come from? Why does it matter so much? Scarlett could answer any of these questions with a few brief words, but instead she chooses to let the reader discover his or her own answers along the way.  In being just "the plant," this plant becomes every potted plant on every windowsill in every house -- it becomes iconic.

Scarlett also leaves untold the backstory of the plant's significance.  Who is the person who once instructed the narrator to water the plant "all the way to the rocks"?  Who is the person the narrator cries for at the end of the piece -- the person she "remembered"?  Maybe a family member, maybe a friend, maybe just a chance acquaintance.  It's up to the reader to decide, but however the poem may be interpreted, the emotion is there. Scarlett skillfully walks the line between generalizing too much -- leaving no detail to engage the reader -- and providing so much information that she limits the poem's relevance.  The result is a piece that is touchingly specific yet still open to a range of interpretations.

The next time you find yourself bogged down in a tricky block of exposition, step back for a minute and consider whether your poem or story could do just as well without it. Does the reader need to be told every detail at the outset?  Would saying less really be saying more?  "We are masters of the unsaid words," Winston Churchill once observed, "but slaves of those we let slip out."  Once the words are written down, their meaning can all too easily get locked into place, but leaving some things unsaid leaves the reader free to develop new meanings with every reading.  It takes careful writing to achieve this balance, but a mastery of the sort of words unsaid -- and the sort often "longest remembered" -- is well worth the effort.

Cheers,

Ann Pedtke
Slam Master