“The Writer,” at its heart, is about a father and a daughter. The speaker uses the space of the poem to explore two shared experiences between the two characters: the memory of watching a trapped starling in the child’s bedroom, and the frustrations of trying to get a piece of writing just right—an experience the daughter will take with her into her adult life. It is this thread between the two people, more than its beauty of language or setting or overarching metaphor, that makes the poem resonate with readers.

Early in the poem, the speaker listens to his daughter work with an air of indulgent irony. While he recognizes the intensity of youth, his response is only to wish the child luck on her storytelling journey. However, the daughter “pauses, / As if to reject my thought and its easy figure” (Lines 10-11)—a moment that makes the speaker recalibrate his perception of the situation and what it means.

Although the daughter is taking her own journey through a creative landscape of the mind, the narrative arc of the poem is of the father reaching a new understanding about the period of growth his daughter is entering, and where it will lead.