Transparency and Light
In this poem, Dharker uses the imagery of light shining through paper to emphasize the transparency of the material. Light is introduced in the first lines of the poem: "paper that lets the light / shine through." This is what could alter things in the grand design of life. In books, the pages that are "smoothed and stroked" and given attention over the years are what allow for the transparency that lets light through (Lines 11-12).
A metaphor constructed over the course of the poem compares paper to cities and eventually to skin, thus projecting the imagery of transparency and light onto the surface of the human body. Though tissue (both as paper and skin) is not meant to last, its transparency is what allows the light to shine through. This suggests the power of vulnerability: if we let ourselves be touched by others over the course of our lives, then the light will shine through.
The Importance of Paper
"Tissue" deals with paper's physicality and its poetics. As a material, paper has allowed people to record information, transfer knowledge, exchange currency, and communicate. The Greek term poiesis means the act of making, of creation; to explore ‘poetics’ is to pay careful attention to the nature of an object or process. The poetics of paper would be a topic of interest to Dharker, who often pairs her poems with illustrations.
Different forms of paper appear in the poem, including a copy of the Koran, maps, and business records from a grocer. The example of the Koran foreshadows the final line that transforms paper into skin. Someone carefully wrote facts about their family histories (births, weights, heights, and deaths) onto the back of the holy text. This is an important symbol of human connection, made possible in this instance thanks to paper.
Fragility
This is also a poem about fragility. The speaker emphasizes the fragile materiality of paper through its thinness—but it is precisely this thinness that allows the light to shine through. When the speaker imagines buildings made of paper, they drift, easily fall away on a sigh, and shift in the direction of the wind (Lines 13-16). If an architect were to rely on the material of paper in the actual construction of cities, daylight would break through the capitals and monoliths that society deems permanent (Lines 29-30). A monolith is a large and impersonal social structure regarded as intractably indivisible and uniform, but a monolith made of paper speaks to the transience of what we deem permanent.
In this poem, the speaker maintains that something fragile can still be incredibly beautiful and powerful. This kind of beauty and power depends upon the fact that it is "never meant to last," and instead be something "smoothed and stroked / and thinned to be transparent" (Lines 34-36). This is a comment on vulnerability and mortality in the context of human nature.
