Kattelman is a freelance writer who specializes in writing about the arts. In this essay, she considers the poetic elements present in Keller's autobiography.

In The Story of My Life Helen Keller recounts her early experiences of being awakened to a world of words and concepts through the brilliant teaching methods of her tutor and constant companion, Anne Sullivan. She carefully retraces the moments when she first connected a word with the physical object it represents (water) and continues on to describe how she gradually built up a vocabulary and an understanding of not only a physical world, but also a world of intangible concepts, ideas, images and emotions. Keller connected to the world through the words that were spelled into her hand, and it was these words that sparked an understanding of human existence. By realizing that words could be puttogether to evoke mental images, Keller...