The Stenographers Poem

Lost and Found: Identification and Community in “The Stenographers” and “This is a Photograph of Me” P.K. Page’s “The Stenographers” and Margaret Atwood’s “This is a Photograph of Me” navigate the state of being ostracized from the larger community. The poetic devices utilised within the poems create a sense of community and belonging for the lost or unnoticed. In Page’s poem it illustrates the mental condition of the stenographers, a profession women took up during the Second World War, in an effort to engage the audience with an often overlooked group. Atwood’s poem illuminates the status of the speaker as it describes a photograph and their difficult to pinpoint location with its landscape that has remained unnoticed. Through the use of …show more content…
The beginning of the poem recounts how the stenographers reflect on their childhoods and accomplish their work together (lines 5-16); this denotes some participation of a social experience. However as their work starts a sense of disconnectedness emerges. Lines 13-16 …show more content…
The community from Atwood’s “This is a Photograph of Me” appears to be difficult to find due to the speaker’s forgotten state and isolation from human society. Despite this a community exists due to the existence of this photograph. This poem is an invitation to find what has gone unnoticed in a photograph. The direct address to the reader at the end brings all who read it together: “but if you look long enough / eventually / you will be able to see me” (24-26). The pronoun “you” receives a plural connotation: “you all” and connects all readers. Those who have identified with the poem become both reader and speaker, the “me” in the poem. In this dual position they will notice the unnoticed and in turn be noticed. This operation of noticing and being noticed forms a community of connectedness based on shared experience: “You” have been lost but are now found and