What does the mirror stands for in “Beware: Do Not Read This Poem” by Ishmael Reed.
Ishmael Reed is known for his satirical works challenging American political culture, and highlighting political and cultural oppression. In Beware: Do Not Read This Poem Reed protests against cultural dominance. Culture is a part of people, and language and art are parts of culture. And in this poem Reed talks about how people are made by cultures and lost to other cultures. However, Reed’s rightness of cultural protest is not of concern here, rather, the symbolic presentation of the mirror is under scrutiny here; and it can be said that the mirror represents art, literature and strikingly the poem itself.
The poem starts with how an old woman becomes obsessed with mirrors, and grows isolated from the community, and how she abandons her old life and finds a new life among her mirrors, by disappearing herself within it. By this old woman’s story poet recalls the enchanting effects of literature and art on a reader. Poet rejects the idea of art and literature as a simple mirror reflecting life, and rather, claims it as a living experience. One finds reflection of his own life in literature, like the mirror, and gets lost in his imagination. At times, literature creates a whole new world, a world where things are very different, sometimes surreal, yet a reader finds reality in it, as it is really happening; and as he moves deeper into the story, the imagination becomes so strong that he begins to experience and live that surreal world. He begins to feel what the characters feel-their pain, bliss, agony, and redemption-as if the emotions were his own. He finds himself standing in front of a mirror; a mirror reflecting life, which is not his own, yet through his imagination he feels it, lives it, and gradually disappears into the mirror.
After the old woman's story the poet warns us to "back off" from this poem, or it will devour us, he says. And the poet is right, our eyes are drawn to this poem, and so is our attention, and by the enchanting old woman's story our thoughts too become involved; regardless of poets warnings we read on, and find ourselves in a situation where we can't stop reading, and slowly give in. Next the poet depicts in his lines, how the"hungry" of the poem devours us, like a snake. First, the poem's enchanting words reflect in our "eyes", and then it creates imagination inside our "head" and then slowly we begin feel the effects of it in our whole body, from the "arms" to "fingers", until it reaches the very end of the "fingertips". The poem itself becomes "a greedy mirror" and into which we disappear.
Reed, in his poem, describes the enchanting effects of literature and art, through which readers are captivated into disappearance; and while describing these effects he makes us disappear into his mirror, which is the poem. Mirror plays an enormously significant role in the poem, as-in the story-mirror itself is portrayed as a poem or a form of literature and art.