Deixis
Quick answer: Deixis covers pointing words like this, here, now and you, whose meaning depends on the speaker's position. Learn how deixis anchors and unsettles poems.
Deixis is the linguistic term for pointing words, expressions like 'this', 'that', 'here', 'now', 'you' and 'yesterday', whose meaning depends entirely on who is speaking, where and when. Say 'I am here now' and every word is deictic: it points from the speaker's position, and shifts the moment someone else says it. The word comes from the Greek for pointing, and linguists sort deixis into person (I, you), place (here, this), and time (now, tomorrow).
Poems are saturated with deixis, and poets exploit it constantly, often without knowing the name. A lyric that opens 'Come here, quickly, before the light goes' drops the reader into a scene mid-gesture, forced to construct the here, the light and the urgency. That instant, immersive pull is deixis doing its work.
How It Works
In conversation, pointing words are resolved by the physical situation: I can see what 'this' is. On the page there is no situation, so every deictic word makes the reader build one. An invented opening shows the effect: 'Not that one. The other photograph, / the one where she is still laughing.' Nothing has been introduced, yet 'that one' and 'the other' conjure a room, two people, a box of photographs and a history of grief, all from pointing.
Poets use this in two directions. Anchoring deixis stabilises the poem: a firm 'here', a dated 'now', a named 'you' give the reader coordinates. Unanchored deixis unsettles: pronouns without referents and 'that day' without a date create mystery and intimacy at once, as though we had walked into a conversation that trusts us to keep up.
Where You Will See It
Keats opens 'This living hand' (written around 1819) with a deictic thrust, the hand held 'towards you', so the poem seems to reach out of the page. Whitman's 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry' builds its whole spell from person and time deixis, its 'you' meaning readers not yet born. Frost's dramatic poems anchor us with plain pointers, this pasture, that wall, while much contemporary lyric deliberately withholds referents: an entire poem about 'it' and 'that year' whose refusal to explain is the emotional point.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Audit your pointers in revision. Circle every 'this', 'that', 'here', 'now', 'you' and ask whether the reader can resolve it, and whether you want them to. Unresolvable pointing is a legitimate effect, but it should be a decision, not an accident left over from a draft where you knew what 'it' meant and forgot the reader does not.
Use deixis to control distance. 'That winter, in that town' pushes the material away; 'this winter, this town, tonight' pulls it against the reader's skin. Switching from past-tense narration to a sudden deictic present, 'and now the door is opening', is one of the oldest tricks for making a memory turn dangerous again.
What poets can take from this
- Circle every pointing word in a draft and check the reader can resolve it, or that you chose the mystery.
- Open mid-gesture with unexplained deixis when you want instant intimacy.
- Shift from 'that' to 'this' and past to present to close emotional distance.
- Anchor at least one coordinate, place, time or person, so mystery has a floor.
- Beware pronoun pile-ups: three unresolved referents is a puzzle, not a poem.
Try it yourself
Write a poem that begins with the words 'Not here. There.' and never names the place, the speaker or the listener directly, yet lets an attentive reader work out all three by the final line.
Questions
What are the main types of deixis?
Linguists usually list person deixis (I, you, they), place deixis (here, there, this, that) and time deixis (now, then, yesterday). Some add discourse deixis, pointing at the text itself, and social deixis, markers of status and relationship.
Why does deixis matter in poetry?
Because poems arrive without a physical situation, every pointing word makes readers construct the scene themselves. Poets exploit that: firm deixis anchors and immerses, withheld deixis creates mystery, and shifts in deixis move the reader nearer or further.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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