TUMULTUARY

writing ‘silhouette’

to start this off let me explain one of my favorite, and shortest, poems from 2017. around this time i was dating my now wife, Tanya. our relationship was tough and under the natural strain of distance. because of this, a lot of my writing in 2017 comes from a place of regret and longing. it was difficult for me to see where the relationship was going because of so many miscommunications and missed opportunities that come with dating over distance and my writing sort of took on that emotion.

/i would tear out a page of my past and relive the cold morning/

if life is a book i wanted to go back to the pages where things made sense and were more clear. that place in time was before i decided to leave for my home country leaving Tanya behind. ‘the cold morning’ is a reference to cold winter mornings. i wanted to relate the feeling of waiting for the sun to rise on a cold winter morning to the feeling of waiting for things to kind of get better.

/i would retrieve the figments i abandoned. i would dive into you/

‘figments’ is the stand out word in this poem. it’s the strongest. the feeling of our relationship at this time was that it was and it wasn’t. it was real but impossible to grasp. in a distance relationship the most important thing to manage is to hold onto the reality of two worlds in the same place. when i struggled to hold them, and would let go of them, i would wish i could hold onto them again. ‘i would dive into you’ is the strongest way i can say i would completely commit to this relationship if i could get past all of these feelings.

read silhouette here

Andrew Dalrymple

October 9, 2019

blogging, poetry

blogging, explanations, mywriting, writing

4 responses to “writing ‘silhouette’”

@devotionsfortoday

October 9, 2019 at 12:33 pm

Lovely

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B. K. Neifert

October 9, 2019 at 5:47 pm

Thank you for reminding me what Ekphrasis is. I often forget sometimes. For some reason I thought it was describing the process of making a craft, not the actual craft itself.

Like, I always saw Jeremiah 18:4 as Ekphrasis, because it was explaining the craft. Or “Go, Ploghman, Plough”.

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1. Andrew Dalrymple
  
  October 9, 2019 at 5:56 pm
  
  i think it can be both. ekphrasis, i think, more describes a thinking exercise that should come with any work of art. using Jeremiah 18:4 is an appropriate example of ekphrasis from the part of the artist rather than the audience.
  
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  1. B. K. Neifert
    
    October 9, 2019 at 6:00 pm
    
    I don’t know, to be honest with you. Literary snobs could disagree. Would you mind if I make it Ekphrasis? That way they cannot argue? I’ll use some technical term, but otherwise it’s Ekphrasis? I’ve met a lot of people who don’t think, and sometimes they annoy me, because you’re right. I always saw it as Ekphrasis.
    
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