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Suspended reference

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

An allusion or reference left ambiguous or unresolved within the poem

Detailed Definition
Suspended reference occurs when a pronoun, noun, or allusion is introduced without immediate clarification, delaying full meaning to create mystery, tension, or readerly participation; it invites interpretation through contextual clues rather than explicit statement, common in elliptical or modernist verse.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Emily Dickinson’s “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” the “Plank in Reason” breaks without explaining what follows; T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” suspends reference in “I will show you fear in a handful of dust”; Wallace Stevens’s “The Snow Man” ends with “Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is,” suspending reference; Paul Celan’s “Death Fugue” suspends reference to Holocaust horrors through metaphor (“black milk”).
Additional Notes
Suspended reference delays the identification of a pronoun or noun, creating mystery or tension; common in modernist and experimental poetry.
Also Known As
Deferred identification delayed antecedent withheld referent ambiguous pronoun cataphoric suspension deferred reference Forward reference delay
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