Historical Context and Problematic Perceptions in "The Right Word" Timothy Sexton College

"The Right Word" is a poem by Imtiaz Dharker which was published in 2006 collection titled The Terrorist at My Table. The subject matter of this selection from that collection comments upon the larger thematic thread unifying it with other poems. Dharker is a British poet of Pakistani birth writing about a world forever changed by the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Terrorism became synonymous with Islamic fundamentalism during this tumultuous early period of the new millennium. As with many of the other poems in the collection, the point is not whether Dharker herself is a follower of Islam, but rather the immediate perception that her Pakistani heritage immediately makes her come under suspicion by many who equate Pakistan with Islam and Islam with being a Muslim and being a Muslim with being an extremist and extremism with being a terrorist. "The Right Word" commences from the point of being a member of a culture irrationally viewed as dangerous by hundreds of millions of people and expands to examine multiple themes.

In the first stanza of the poem the speaker describes a person standing outside the door only as a vague figure "lurking in the shadows" who is nevertheless characterized as a terrorist. In the second...