Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Susan Wood’s "Leafing" is a deeply introspective meditation on loneliness, longing, and the ways in which we navigate emotional pain through observation and imagination. Set against the evocative backdrop of autumn evenings, the poem blends external imagery with internal turmoil, capturing the speaker’s attempt to reconcile her isolation with the seeming harmony of the world around her. Through its striking imagery and poignant reflections, "Leafing" explores the ache of longing for connection and the stark contrast between appearances and internal realities.

The poem begins with a simple yet resonant image: the speaker wandering the neighborhood during "autumn twilights," a time imbued with both beauty and melancholy. The act of walking is an attempt to “walk away the pain,” a physical effort to escape an emotional burden. Yet the admission that “It didn’t work” sets the tone for the poem’s exploration of unrelenting inner struggle. The juxtaposition of motion and emotional stagnation underscores the futility of her efforts, as if the pain is something inescapable, woven into the very fabric of her existence.

The autumn setting mirrors the speaker’s emotional state, with its symbols of decay, transience, and fear. The toys and bicycles scattered across the dry grass evoke a sense of abandonment and neglect, paralleling the speaker’s feelings of emptiness. Halloween imagery—scarecrows, pumpkins, cobwebs, and paper ghosts—adds a layer of haunting charm, reflecting both the season’s rituals and the human desire to stave off fear through symbolic gestures. These “little charms to stave off fear” highlight the universal impulse to create illusions of safety and control, even when confronted with uncertainty and vulnerability.

The poem shifts to the speaker’s observations of the homes she passes, where she glimpses curated domestic scenes through open curtains. These brief, voyeuristic glimpses into other lives are richly detailed: polished tables, tapestries or Mexican wall hangings, sisal carpets, walls of books, and the faint strains of classical music. The specificity of these descriptions gives life to the imagined warmth and stability within these homes, contrasting sharply with the speaker’s sense of being “carved and hollowed out.” The act of imagining these lives—complete with cultural markers like Lucien Freud or Stanley Spencer posters—reveals the speaker’s yearning for the comfort and completeness she perceives in these households.

However, the speaker acknowledges the futility and irrationality of this longing: “Against all reason, I wanted to believe / they were happy, though I couldn’t give a definition.” This moment is both vulnerable and self-aware, highlighting the dissonance between the speaker’s projections of happiness onto others and her inability to articulate what happiness means for herself. The admission of this gap between perception and reality underscores the central tension of the poem: the difficulty of reconciling one’s inner emptiness with the outward appearances of others’ lives.

The closing metaphor of the speaker as “empty as a jack-o’-lantern” encapsulates the depth of her pain. Like a carved pumpkin, she feels hollowed out and exposed, her internal vulnerabilities rendered visible to the world. The comparison also ties back to the Halloween imagery, emphasizing the duality of the season: its playful, communal rituals and its underlying themes of mortality and fear. The speaker’s identification with the jack-o’-lantern suggests a sense of being both fragile and illuminated, a vessel for her own pain yet unable to contain it.

Wood’s language in "Leafing" is both precise and evocative, blending tactile details with emotional resonance. The poem’s structure, moving from external observations to internal reflections, mirrors the speaker’s attempt to process her feelings through the lens of the world around her. The use of seasonal and domestic imagery creates a rich backdrop against which the speaker’s loneliness and yearning are vividly rendered.

At its heart, "Leafing" is a meditation on the interplay between internal struggle and external appearances. Through its exploration of longing, pain, and the human tendency to project meaning onto the lives of others, the poem captures the universal desire for connection and the difficulty of finding solace in a world that often feels indifferent. Wood’s delicate balance of detail and emotion invites readers to reflect on their own experiences of isolation and the ways in which they, too, seek to make sense of their place in a world that is at once beautiful and haunting.

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