Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Bob Hicok’s "The Invisible Man" is an exploration of absence, evasiveness, and identity, centering on a figure who remains tantalizingly out of reach. The poem oscillates between humor, surreal imagery, and a deeper meditation on the ways people can exist on the periphery, never fully known, always slipping through the grasp of perception. The invisible man of the poem is not just a physical absence but a metaphor for a kind of elusive existence—a person, perhaps, who avoids intimacy or society, or who lives in the margins of someone else's life.

The poem opens with an immediate sense of both possession and loss: "He is my manta ray. The Degas / that got away from me." The comparison to a manta ray suggests something both majestic and elusive, a creature that glides beneath the surface, unseen except in brief moments. The reference to Degas—a painter known for capturing movement, especially in ballet dancers—reinforces the theme of fleeting presence. The Degas that got away is an artwork the speaker failed to obtain, just as the invisible man is someone he cannot hold onto, cannot fully perceive.

The next lines expand this idea of elusiveness through a series of shifting images: "Any shoe you choose / or the pause in war / when men apologize / to each other’s wounds." The phrase "any shoe you choose" is delightfully ambiguous—does it suggest that the invisible man is ubiquitous, present in every choice, or that he is as interchangeable and unnoticed as a forgotten shoe? The pause in war introduces a moment of suspended violence, an almost mythical space where soldiers momentarily recognize each other's suffering. This reinforces the idea that the invisible man inhabits gaps—pauses, fleeting reconciliations, or things that almost happen but don’t.

Hicok then acknowledges the imaginary nature of this figure: "I make him up as I go. / Nearly see him each week." This confession shifts the poem’s tone slightly—has the speaker invented the invisible man, or is he trying to construct a memory of someone who remains intangible? The phrase "nearly see him each week" suggests a regularity to this evasion, as if this figure is a ghost of habit, passing just at the edges of vision.

The next passage is particularly vivid in its depiction of movement and perception: "Blur dashing curb to door, / shadow in daylight / and cataract to the moon, / reflex of the ineffable / wisp." The blur dashing suggests something fleeting and fast, someone always moving between spaces. The phrase "shadow in daylight" is paradoxical—shadows exist because of daylight, but they are also a reminder of absence, of something blocking the light. "Cataract to the moon" suggests a cloudy distortion of vision, an obstruction between the speaker and full clarity. The "reflex of the ineffable wisp" reinforces the sense of something instinctive, impossible to define or contain.

The next lines move toward the invisible man’s physical absence: "His skin hides / from eyes, lips refuse / the brand of words." This suggests not just invisibility but a resistance to identity itself—his skin cannot be seen, his lips do not allow for naming or speech. The speaker follows with a more humorous lament: "Twelve years and I don’t know / how many noses he owns, / if feet by two or is he a horse, / sea of course, or made / of cheese to the knees." The absurdity here highlights the frustration of never having a clear sense of who this person is. The rapid-fire questions create a feeling of grasping at straws, throwing out possibilities as if any of them might hold the key to perception.

Yet the speaker has had one moment of clarity: "Though once / I saw an ear clear, nautilus / shaped, that’s it / for biography." The comparison of the ear to a nautilus—a deep-sea creature with a spiral shell—suggests that even this glimpse is enigmatic, as if the invisible man is as much an artifact of the deep unknown as a living being. The phrase "that’s it / for biography" is both humorous and tragic—the speaker’s only knowledge of this person is a single fleeting detail, which may or may not even be accurate.

Then comes a deeply personal metaphor: "He is / my summer, always leaving, / my hero in sprint / & embrace of the neural twitch / that counsels no, stay low." The phrase "my summer, always leaving" evokes the cyclical nature of absence—the invisible man is like a season that comes and goes, never permanent. The next lines tie him to avoidance and fear: "embrace of the neural twitch / that counsels no, stay low." This suggests that the invisible man is someone ruled by anxiety or introversion, someone who instinctively evades being seen, not out of malice but out of a deep-seated need to disappear.

The poem then explicitly names his condition: "Sociophobe means afraid / of people, he is / blank page, void, the dot / the TV swallows when power / sleeps." The term "sociophobe" suggests that the invisible man is not just unknown but deliberately withdrawing. The image of "the dot / the TV swallows when power / sleeps" is striking—this recalls old televisions where, after turning them off, the image collapsed into a single shrinking dot before fading to black. The invisible man is this final dot, a remnant of presence before total disappearance.

The closing lines introduce a final, more abstract metaphor: "The hummingbird / no living person’s seen, / blue unless red until green." This impossible hummingbird, unseen yet shifting colors, embodies the invisible man in his essence—always moving, always elusive, existing in transformations rather than fixed states. The phrase "blue unless red until green" suggests an entity that never settles, never allows for certainty. He is not just invisible—he is in a state of perpetual change.

Hicok’s "The Invisible Man" is a masterful exploration of presence and absence, memory and perception. The poem reads like an extended game of trying to capture something that cannot be held—whether a lost person, a ghost of memory, or the idea of anonymity itself. It weaves humor, surreal imagery, and philosophical reflection into a meditation on the ways people slip through the cracks of knowing, either by choice or by circumstance. Ultimately, the invisible man remains unknowable, existing only in the gaps between sight and imagination, a shifting presence always just beyond reach.

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