What Poetry Dares To Unsay

by Roger B. Rueda

Ophelia Dimalanta’s What Poetry Does Not Say is not just a poem—it is a direct challenge. A slap in the face of those who believe poetry exists merely to be read, understood, and tucked neatly into the folds of polite society. This poem spits in the eye of the notion that poetry must be an obedient servant to language. Instead, it asserts that poetry thrives in the unspoken, the unsaid, the deliberately left out. And if you cannot grasp that, then perhaps poetry is not for you.

Dimalanta opens with an image of fragility: "All shades of what is held / Most dear most guarded / Are frailest, easily violated." Here, she unveils the paradox—what we cherish most is often what is most vulnerable, most susceptible to destruction. And so, what does poetry do? It does not preserve these delicate truths with a firm grasp; rather, it lets them slip through the fingers of ordinary language, escaping the "constraining ministries" of words. In other words, poetry operates in the spaces between, in whispers too soft for the untrained ear.

This is where the poet’s subversion becomes razor-sharp. We have been conditioned to believe that language exists to name, to define, to clarify. But Dimalanta scoffs at this idea. "For poetry never says; / It unsays." In that single line, she dismantles centuries of literary convention. If poetry spoke like the rest of language, it would be as pedestrian as a weather report. But true poetry, Dimalanta insists, does not state—it negates. To speak is to "confine, contain." To unsay is to unshackle.

Consider this: what do we remember most in life? The words spoken, or the words withheld? The grand declarations, or the silences that stretched too long between them? Dimalanta argues that the real power of poetry is not in its ability to define, but in its ability to evoke. That which is deliberately left out becomes the most haunting presence of all.

This poem is a challenge, an indictment, and a revelation all at once. It dares us to acknowledge that the most profound truths are not the ones we articulate, but the ones we sense in the spaces left vacant. It does not invite easy interpretation, nor does it tolerate lazy reading. And that, perhaps, is its most important lesson: poetry is not meant to comfort. It is meant to unsettle.

So the next time you find yourself searching for meaning in a poem, stop looking at what is said. Instead, listen to what is not. Because as Dimalanta makes brutally clear—what poetry does not say is precisely where poetry begins.