Orphan

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davinci_drawing

Submitted by Kim Whysall-Hammond

Poetry is the orphan of silence
Begging for attention
Word spaces and line breaks
Her crutches

Whatever the poem describes to you
Is a shadow
A portion, a flavour
Of what the poet is trying to say

Photo credit: Leonardo da Vinci – Sketches

15 thoughts on “Orphan”

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  9. This is an excellent poem. The first line is irresistible and the last line leaves me wondering. It leads me to think about the role of the poet/artist. Are we the interpreters of the shadows or do we just throw our own shadows on the wall?

    Reply

    1. What a fascinating and thoughtful response! You pose an excellent question–it’s our belief that posing such questions was quite the “purpose” of this piece, if it can be said to have one, due to its meta-poetic style that seems to comments on the process of poetry itself.

      Reply

      1. I think we are making our best effort, when we are at our best, to interpret the shadows we see, unfortunately we have to use our own shadow puppets to get at the meaning of what we see. So it is shadow upon shadow upon shadow…

        Reply

  10. Thank you all for your comments on my poem. I am intrigued by what we try to achieve when we write poetry and have written several poems exploring this. ‘Orphan’ is the latest one and was sparked by the quote from Charles Simic:

    “Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.”

    Reply

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