Summary
In her poem "Tissue," Imtiaz Dharker explores the material of tissue in an extended metaphor. The poem begins by centering on the type of paper that lets the light shine through. The speaker states that this is what could alter things. It is a paper thinned by the passage of time or by being touched, and it is the kind that would be found in well-used books.
In the second stanza, the poet provides an image of the Koran. In the back of this copy of the Muslim holy text, someone hand wrote a genealogy in sepia ink. It is complete with information such as height, weight, and place and cause of death. These pages have been turned transparent with use.
The speaker imagines buildings made of paper: feeling their drift, seeing them fall easily away on a sigh, and shift in the direction of the wind. It is the same with maps. Sunlight shines through the lines made by their borders, rivers, roads, rail tracks, and mountain folds.
In the sixth stanza, the poet provides an image of fine slips from grocery shops with purchase histories (how much was sold and what was paid for by credit cards). These, the speaker says, might fly our lives like paper kites. Dharker writes that an architect could use all this by layering luminous script and numbers over line. Rather than brick or block, the architect would use a thin paper to design and build. This is the same paper that allows daylight to break through capitals and monoliths, referred to as the shapes that pride can make. This process would use living tissue traced by a grand design to raise an impermanent structure made of paper.
In a metaphor that constitutes the last lines of the poem, the poet imagines this paper, smoothed and stroked and thinned to transparency, into the skin of the reader.
Analysis
Imtiaz Dharker's poem "Tissue" deals with the materiality and poetics of paper in an extended metaphor that comments on the transient nature of civilization and the fragile power of human life. The first lines of the poem introduce the type of paper that will be focused on (tissue). This is a "Paper that lets the light / shine through," as opposed to a heavy and thick paper (Lines 1-2). Tissue is thin, soft, and used for wrapping or protecting something or for hygiene. According to the speaker, "this / is what could alter things" (Lines 2-3). To alter something is to change it or cause a change in its character or composition. The word "alter" serves as a homophone to the word "altar," which sets up the religious imagery that follows in the next stanza. What the paper's transparency is capable of altering is not yet clear.
The poem is written in quatrains with one single-line stanza at the end. Through the use of enjambment and caesura, many of the ideas and images stretch to the next stanza. For example, the last line of the first stanza, "Paper thinned by age or touching," continues on in the next stanza to develop into an image of the Koran (Line 4). Like tissue paper itself, the quatrain structure of the poem is fragile. This reflects the way in which the speaker later imagines the architecture of civilization to be made from tissue.
The poet exemplifies "paper thinned by age or touching" as "the kind you find in well-used books" (Line 5). The thinning of the page implies a kind of damage, but that is not how the poem treats this occurrence. Rather, it is a sign that the book is "well-used" and that it will let the light shine through. The phrase "well-used" could have been "well-loved," but the speaker holds back this sentiment by focusing on the utility of the book rather than on the emotional handling. The word "well" signifies the amount which the book has been used, but it could also signify that it has been used to the best extent possible. The love of using a book "well" is evoked later in the description of what is written inside.
The particular book in this image is the Koran, the holy text of Islam. In this case, "a hand / has written in the names and histories" of a family (Lines 6-7). To write one's genealogy in the back of the Koran shows that this book is well-loved because it provides the religious structure for the family's life. These include prayers, moral guidance, and historical narrative. The act of record-keeping is also significant in that the one(s) who wrote this information did so with the intention of preserving it.
The image of "a hand" writing a genealogy into the back of the Koran in a sense depersonalizes the one who wrote it. This synecdoche defines the person by their hand, suggesting that the most important quality about us (perhaps what makes us human) is what we do or create. When someone says they "need a hand," it means they are asking for help. In the poem, it is suggested that the act of writing helps future generations.
The information written in the back of the Koran includes "who was born to whom, // the height and weight, who / died where and how" (Lines 8-10). It is a family tree filled in with physical indicators and death notes. The description of the "sepia [dates]" denoting the family's deaths brings to the foreground the act of writing. In photography, sepia is a softer manipulation of light that creates a soft, dreamlike aesthetic. Popularized in the late 1800s, the chemicals in sepia toning worked better to preserve photographs than the chemicals involved in black-and-white printing. In comparison to the starkness of black and white, sepia tones also imbue warmth and intensity into an image. They function the same way in the poem.
The pages where the family history was written are "smoothed and stroked and turned / transparent with attention" (Lines 11-12). This is where it becomes clear that the earlier phrase "well-used" means "well-loved" in the context of this copy of the Koran. The sibilance of the /s/ in the words "smoothed" and "stroked" show the mutual ease and comfort between the person and the book. The pages have turned "transparent with attention," echoing the poem's first line about paper that lets the light shine through (Line 12). The stanza end-stops here.
In the fourth stanza, the speaker imagines buildings as paper, how she "might / feel their drift, see how easily / they fall away on a sigh, a shift / in the direction of the wind" (Lines 13-16). The word "drift" means to be carried slowly by a current of air or water, but it also carries the meaning of understanding. To "catch one's drift" means to understand what one is communicating. The placement occurring in this metaphor is interesting because the paper buildings are not entirely external. The speaker "feels" their movement and meaning, and "[sees]" them as they "fall away on a sigh" (Lines 14-15). The expression "[falling] away on a sigh" evokes the act of breath, which is essential in poetry. Unlike the first developed image in the poem of the well-loved Koran, this sensory exploration of buildings as paper is contained in only one stanza.
Maps are the subject of the fifth stanza. The first line, "Maps too," is not entirely clear; are they "too" being imagined as paper (Line 17)? Are they being placed in the same inconstant category as paper buildings? In any case, maps are meant to guide one toward a destination. Their transparency allows the sun to shine through "their borderlines, the marks / that rivers make, roads, / railtracks, mountainfolds" (Lines 18-20). Map-making is a creation of borders (lines of separation) as well as, more passively, a recording of where things are. Despite the control that humans hope to accomplish with this project, the sun still shines through. The sun acts as part of a larger force later referred to as a "grand design" (Line 32).
The next section of the poem evokes economics. "Fine slips from grocery shops" provide information such as "how much was sold / and what was paid by credit card" (Lines 21-23). The material of receipts often is flimsy and disposable, suggesting that the notion of wealth is also temporary. The word "fine," however, also carries the meaning of something being of a higher quality. Mentioning credit cards hints at the possibility of struggling with debt. Though this passage uses modern images, the concepts it describes are ancient. Food is an absolute essential to sustain life. Since the beginning of trade, people have been buying things on credit. The word comes from the Latin creditum, which meant a loan, something entrusted to another. The marketplace was a space that defined social relationships.
According to the speaker, these fine slips from the grocer "might fly our lives like paper kites" (Line 24). This simile performs a pathetic fallacy, giving the fine slips the ability to fly a kite. While kites may appear to move freely according to the wind, they are really attached to a string that someone controls. What this simile suggests is that while we may feel freedom in our purchases, they actually bind us to a system that pulls the strings of our lives. The uncertainty of the word "might" complicates this. Perhaps Dharker is criticizing the economic system in the poem without attempting to portray it as completely negative and harmful.
The speaker remarks that "An architect could use all this" in the seventh stanza (Line 25). This entails "[placing] layer over layer, luminous / script over numbers over line" (Lines 26-27). All of the acts of using paper to write, draw, and formulate are transformed into building materials. Architects design buildings but do not usually take part in the actual physical work of construction except as consultants and coordinators. They do, however, make three-dimensional models—this passage may be referring to this.
Dharker places various aspects of writing into a stratum of construction. The speaker states that architects will "never wish to build again with brick // or block" (Lines 28-29). The use of enjambment breaks this phrase into two stanzas, enacting on a formal level the breakdown or de-construction that the speaker is describing. Eschewing their old materials, architects will instead "let the daylight break / through" (Lines 29-30). In the design process, architects are very concerned with light. The famous architect Le Corbusier defined his craft as "a learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light.” The concept of light shining through paper appears again here.
The light breaks "through capitals and monoliths" (Line 30). A capital is a city or town that serves as the administrative political center of a country, state, or province. Based on the metaphor of language as construction materials, it's important to note that the word "capital" also refers to the large letter size used for names and the beginning of sentences. A monolith is a single great stone often in the form of a monument or column. The word "monolith" is also used to refer to something large and powerful that functions as a unified whole. Both of these are referred to in the poem as "the shapes that pride can make" (Line 31). Here, the poet comments on human hubris; every empire thinks it will last forever.
The architect "[traces] a grand design // with living tissue" (Lines 32-33). It is here that Dharker explicitly engages with the biological meaning of the word "tissue" as a group or layer of cells that work together to perform a specific function. The phrase "a grand design" holds spiritual significance, suggesting that we are governed by something larger. This design is considered both from the perspective of its parts and of its existence as a whole. It is a structure that the architect raises that is "never meant to last" (Line 34). Instead of the hubris of false permanence, the architect accepts the fleeting nature of things. Bringing all the layers of the metaphor together (the act of building, the material of living tissue, and the act of writing or drawing on paper), Dharker describes the structure as being made "of paper smoothed and stroked / and thinned to be transparent" (Lines 35-36). This echoes the earlier treatment of the Koran, and it is this that "could alter things" in the first stanza.
The final line—"turned into your skin"—directly addresses the reader (Line 37). Here, Dharker specifies the type of human tissue she is referring to. Skin is a sensory organ that constitutes the border between the internal and the external. The transformation at work suggests that our skin is made from the processes of writing and building. This is what the architect uses to form the living tissue that becomes "your skin" in the poem. There is a sense of both the individual and the collective in the extended metaphor of this poem.
