Poem Analysis

(Untitled Fragment)

Little solace comes
to those who grieve
when thoughts keep drifting
as walls keep shifting
and this blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves

moments before the wind.

-from House of Leaves, by Mark Z Danielewski

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This is one of my favorite poems, and I decided to go ahead and analyze it.

"Little solace comes": this sets the theme of the entire poem. It is short and bleak. Some might read it with emphasis on "little", as in "at least there is a little solace"...but that is not the implication here. As we read on, we realize that there is "only" a little solace.

"to those who grieve": this could be specific as in "those who grieve shouldn't because little solace comes"; or it could be general, as in, "we are all grieving." Because the poem has not specified which grievers it feels a little more to me like it applies to all people in general.

"when thoughts keep drifting": again - this could be a specific or general time. The word "keep" implies that the thoughts were drifting to begin with. The griever's thoughts are usually thoughts of grief. "Drifting" implies a passive movement - driven by a current or some other outside force. So thoughts of grief are not something you can really control.

"as walls keep shifting": this seems to have little bearing at this point in the poem, but shifting walls are like shifting foundations in that you expect them to remain where they are. Unlike thoughts of grief, that you might expect to drift the walls you expect to be solid and unmoving. As the walls keep shifting the chaos and lack of control over the mind and thoughts is brought out into "the real world". The author may be suggesting that the outside world, the real world, is just as chaotic and uncontrollable as the emotions of a human mind.

"and this blue world of ours": we have moved from an image of walls (usually associated with buildings - and houses, in particular for this discussion) to the whole world. We have substituted a part for the whole. This motion in the dialogue summons the power of the synechdoche - where a part represents a whole.

"sees a house of leaves": house is typed in blue...as throughout the book, and now reminds us that our world is a "blue world" (mentioned in the previous line). This re-invigorates the use of synechdoche. The title of the book is now connected to a concrete picture: our world is like a house of leaves. The house, with its many (shifting) walls, stands in for "the world". The shifting walls might represent the leaves...

"moments before the wind": the image of this line takes the images of the previous lines and forces us to see those images as frail. If the wind can shake the leaves, then there might be some force on the world/house that can "shift the walls."

The use of synechdoche can now be seen again - in the title (or lack of title) of the poem. Now we can presume that this "untitled fragment" might stand for something more. A "fragment" is simply a small part of something more...the fact that this is an UNTITLED fragment gives us no clue as to what the title of the original work could be...we might assume that it, too, is untitled. The ambiguity could lead us to believe that it does not matter who the specific people or times are...what the specific name of the work is...this leads us to believe that these are general references to all people, all time.

In short we can now see that this poem is simply an unidentified work - a small piece of something standing for a whole, that suggest that the chaos and lack of control over our own inner beings, is representative of humanities chaos and lack of control...our whole world might change on us, and there's nothing we can do about it. We - each of us - become untitled fragments of humanity. The world might be blown away at any moment and there will be little solace to anyone...