Blog
Mystery | Peter Anderson
Fri, 14 February 2025
When writing a poem, do you feel you have to record everything you think and feel about a particular topic, so that your readers will know exactly how they ought to think and feel about it too?
Giving your reader all possible information can be a good strategy for getting your first thoughts onto the page. But very often, strong poems work precisely because of what they do not say. Often, they leave us with unanswered questions. Sometimes a poem opens a door onto a great mystery and leaves us there.
Peter Anderson is an associate professor of English at the University of Cape Town, with a lifelong interest in creative writing and four poetry collections to his name. This month, he shares a poem that shows how important mystery and understatement are to any creative enterprise.
Read the poem he has shared and notice how its refusal to fill in the gaps in our information makes it more moving and memorable.
Cutting
It is my best knife and my favourite.
The knife of my hand.
It is the knife he gave to me
and I paid so that it would not come between us.
Now it has come between us
and I remember him by it who never thought
he would be remembered by a knife
alloyed with so much carbon
it grows a lichen of oxide like a stone.
I chop mint and parsley
and he is dead whom I loved.
Notice how the first stanza reassures us; places us in familiar territory. We are shown that the speaker’s knife is utterly familiar to him, so much so that it feels like an extension of his body – the knife of his hand.
But then, in the second stanza, things become more complicated. First, we are introduced to a second, unnamed person – the man who gave this knife to the speaker. But was it a gift? We discover that the knife was in fact paid for by its current owner, “so that it would not come between us”. We know almost nothing about their relationship, only that they shared this experience.
Next, we learn that there has been a separation between these two men. Have they quarrelled? All we know is that the man who gave the knife is now only accessible to the speaker through memory.
At first, it seems that the mystery is finally solved in the poem’s last line, where we learn that the man who gave the knife has died. But, in fact, the mystery has only deepened. How does it feel to hold a familiar object that was given to one by someone no longer alive? All we know is that death has divided these two men.
Now look at the poem’s title again. Why is it not named after the favourite, familiar knife at its centre? By calling it “Cutting” instead, Anderson turns our attention to the things that separate us from one another. Just as mint or parsley can be cut, the dead and the living are separated from each other. What survives is love and memory. That is the revelation we are offered at the poem’s end, but it only tells us so much. We have been led into the mystery of handling things that remind us of the dead and, specifically, of our own personal dead. That is all the information we need.
In the next few days, write a poem about something you find deeply, persistently mysterious. See if you can lead the reader into this mystery and leave something unexplained at the poem’s end.
The 2026 AVBOB Poetry Competition opens for submissions on 1 August 2025. Visit the AVBOB Poetry website at www.avbobpoetry.co.za today and read some of the prize-winning poems from previous years as you prepare to find your own best words.
Giving your reader all possible information can be a good strategy for getting your first thoughts onto the page. But very often, strong poems work precisely because of what they do not say. Often, they leave us with unanswered questions. Sometimes a poem opens a door onto a great mystery and leaves us there.
Peter Anderson is an associate professor of English at the University of Cape Town, with a lifelong interest in creative writing and four poetry collections to his name. This month, he shares a poem that shows how important mystery and understatement are to any creative enterprise.
Read the poem he has shared and notice how its refusal to fill in the gaps in our information makes it more moving and memorable.
Cutting
It is my best knife and my favourite.
The knife of my hand.
It is the knife he gave to me
and I paid so that it would not come between us.
Now it has come between us
and I remember him by it who never thought
he would be remembered by a knife
alloyed with so much carbon
it grows a lichen of oxide like a stone.
I chop mint and parsley
and he is dead whom I loved.
Notice how the first stanza reassures us; places us in familiar territory. We are shown that the speaker’s knife is utterly familiar to him, so much so that it feels like an extension of his body – the knife of his hand.
But then, in the second stanza, things become more complicated. First, we are introduced to a second, unnamed person – the man who gave this knife to the speaker. But was it a gift? We discover that the knife was in fact paid for by its current owner, “so that it would not come between us”. We know almost nothing about their relationship, only that they shared this experience.
Next, we learn that there has been a separation between these two men. Have they quarrelled? All we know is that the man who gave the knife is now only accessible to the speaker through memory.
At first, it seems that the mystery is finally solved in the poem’s last line, where we learn that the man who gave the knife has died. But, in fact, the mystery has only deepened. How does it feel to hold a familiar object that was given to one by someone no longer alive? All we know is that death has divided these two men.
Now look at the poem’s title again. Why is it not named after the favourite, familiar knife at its centre? By calling it “Cutting” instead, Anderson turns our attention to the things that separate us from one another. Just as mint or parsley can be cut, the dead and the living are separated from each other. What survives is love and memory. That is the revelation we are offered at the poem’s end, but it only tells us so much. We have been led into the mystery of handling things that remind us of the dead and, specifically, of our own personal dead. That is all the information we need.
In the next few days, write a poem about something you find deeply, persistently mysterious. See if you can lead the reader into this mystery and leave something unexplained at the poem’s end.
The 2026 AVBOB Poetry Competition opens for submissions on 1 August 2025. Visit the AVBOB Poetry website at www.avbobpoetry.co.za today and read some of the prize-winning poems from previous years as you prepare to find your own best words.
