A Solitude (1961). Detailed description

Published in The Jacob’s Ladder (1961) before the majority of her most outspoken political poems, “A Solitude,” as does much of her earlier poetry, deals with specificity and the speaker’s personal reflection on the fleeting moments of life. Through a simple narrative about a brief encounter on the subway with a blind man, “A Solitide” explores the way difference affects relationships. Many critics laud the poem for its tenderness, but the speaker exhibits profound ambivalence about her position in relation to the blind man. Rather than offering a simple moral about assisting the disabled, Levertov raises questions about the way we universalize individual perceptions.

The first two stanzas prevent readers from establishing a firm grounding within the poem’s narrative. They do not provide details about place, time, or character—all the things we expect from a story. Instead they present a narrator questioning her perception. She states simply, “I can stare at him” and immediately wonders about his ability to perceive her presence, asking, “Or does he know?” (Poems 1960-1967 70). The second stanza compounds the sense of doubt. The narrator raises the question of her own desire to stare, proclaiming first, “O, strange joy, / to gaze my fill at a stranger’s face.”

The next line, however, negates her satisfaction: “No, my thirst is greater than before” (70). By refusing to provide a logical explanation for her actions, or even a fixed dynamic between the speaker and the blind man, Levertov leaves the reader to fill in the gaps. Her use of fragmentation adds to the challenge and further invites (or forces) the reader to participate in the process of constructing meaning(s) from the material given. Take, for example, the first sentence, “A blind man.” The incomplete thought says nothing of who this blind man is and offers no conclusive idea about his role as the subject of the poem. He simply exists.

The final sentence, “He says, I am,” echoes the first in that it confirms existence without determining its meaning (72). This final line demonstrates the poem’s tendency toward visual suggestion. The use of boldface text highlights certain aspects of the poem. Presumably Levertov means to draw attention to those highlighted words. The reason why, however, remains open to interpretation. The poem’s visual organization does not help fix meaning but sensitizes the reader to perceptual ambiguities. The pattern of three-line stanzas creates divisions in linear thoughts. And line breaks isolate particularly resonant phrases that take on new meaning when separated from grammatical contexts. For instance, “he is blind?” “Solitude,” and “I see him” all take on additional connotative meanings when considered as distinct statements.

As we explore the possibilities that “A Solitude” presents, some formulations of meaning will seem more credible than others. Accounting for specific parts before comprehending the whole, however, agrees with Levertov’s notion that the formation of a community depends on individual development. Exploration of our own ambiguous perceptions and social positions allows for interaction across our differences without erasing them. As the speaker says about the blind man, “he continues / his thoughts alone. But his hand and mine / know one another” (72).

For Discussion or Writing
1. Read “O Taste and See,” another well-known poem by Levertov, in which she uses boldface to highlight certain words. Compare the two poems, focusing on the use of the visual aspects of poetry. Do they employ the boldface text in similar ways? What other visual characteristics does each poem have? Using specific examples from the poems, discuss how the look of each adds or detracts from possible meanings.

2. Levertov openly confessed the influence Rainer Maria Rilke had on her writing, even using a poem of his as a starting point for one of her own. And as she did, he wrote on solitude. In a letter Rilke once purported that “a good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude” (57). What do you think he means by “guardian” of solitude? Why might solitude be so important to him? And how does his comment illuminate Levertov’s poem? Feel free to incorporate Rilke’s writing into your discussion.

3. The speaker sets herself apart from the other passengers on the train by saying that they only glance at the blind man, that they are not “thirsty,” as she is. What point(s) is she trying to make? How does it affect the poem? Does the dissociation change the reader’s relationship to the speaker?